The Things You Had To Leave

My Very First

2010-09-10T21:49:00.001-04:00

Little Demon Bug

2010-09-01T22:39:00.000-04:00

This evening I was sitting in my apartment, minding my own business, when I began to hear this strange sound. It was “flap flap flap BAP…flap flap flap BAP” over and over. I got up to see what was happening, and there was a cicada flying around my nice new lamp.
For those in far-away places, a cicada is a locust-like creature, as wide as my thumb but not as long, big enough that you hear its wings flapping rather than just a buzz. It is completely alien-looking. It is clumsy and stupid, and also makes a horrible shrieking noise when it wants to talk to its friends. I was very pleased that it was not making the noise right then, but I knew that soon I would turn off the lamp and at that point the only light source in the apartment would be my computer monitor. I couldn’t have the big stupid clumsy thing flying around my face all night (plus which the lamp is one of those Chinese-type lamps with a paper shade and it was hitting the shade so hard I was afraid it would break through), but I try not to kill for no reason, so I determined to catch it and put it out the window.
As I say, they’re clumsy, and catching one is no kind of problem. Pretty much right away I was able to grab it. I was careful to hold it actually IN my hand, rather than grabbing it by a wing; if I’d done that, it would have broken the wing trying to escape from me. So I wrapped it gently in my palm and headed for the bathroom (the only window that doesn’t have a screen).
That’s when it started shrieking.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the sound, but if you haven’t, it’s extremely unpleasant, and is less pleasant the closer you are to it. It is the shrieking of souls in hell. Furthermore (and this is something I could totally have lived happily without knowing) when they shriek they vibrate like tiny, creepy cell phones. And it was doing this right there in my hand.
Reflexively I let it go, which I suppose proves that evolution knew what it was doing when it gave them that particular characteristic. How can something so small make that awful noise?
Seriously, I was present at the death of my father. I have been in a fatal car accident. I have witnessed a man being shot to death. I have killed a poisonous snake and fought off a wild dog. I have beaten and escaped from a potential rapist twice my size. But I don’t think I have ever felt a stronger sense of horror than I felt at that moment, with that awful noise and that vibration coming from my own hand. I knew it couldn’t hurt me, but I threw it away from me. It flew right back to the lamp.
I had a feeling that my prehistoric ancestors, who had hunted the mammoth and fought the saber-toothed tiger away from their young, were ashamed of me.
I went and poured myself a shot of whiskey. I lit a smoke, took a drag, and went back to the lamp. I caught it again and wrapped it in my palm, and again it shrieked and vibrated. I stood for a few seconds, smoking, refusing to open my hand, refusing to crush it.
After a while it stopped complaining and decided to wait and see what would happen next. I calmly carried it through to the bathroom and released it. It flew away silently. I hope the rest of its night was better. The rest of mine almost had to be.
I posted a shorter version of this story on Facebook as a sort of joke, but I’ll tell you the truth: as stupid as it sounds, I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything more difficult than standing there, with that shrieking bug in my hand, and refusing to be creeped out. I hope my prehistoric ancestors are satisfied.

What We Mean

2010-08-15T02:04:00.000-04:00

There’s a big argument going on right now in the internet skeptic community, which can basically be boiled down to “Atheism vs. Agnosticism.” I don’t have very many readers, of course, and I am not going to influence this debate by writing here, but I’m gonna tell ya what I think anyway.
It seems to me that there really shouldn’t be a “vs.” in there. Atheism and agnosticism are not identical, but neither are they mutually exclusive. They aren’t about the same thing. Atheism is about belief and agnosticism is about knowledge (or, more accurately, they are about the lack of belief or knowledge). These two things don’t have to overlap, but they frequently do, and it’s certainly possible to be both (like me), neither, or one or the other.
Now, as you may know (and as I’ve said on here many times), words mean things. So, if we’re gonna discuss this we should know what we mean by “atheist” and “agnostic.” Agnosticism simply means that we don’t know. As far as the existence of a god or gods goes, we are all agnostics, speaking literally. The existence of gods can’t be disproven, but there’s no evidence for them, so it’s impossible to actually “know.” Pat Robertson is an agnostic, no matter how sure he is that there’s a god. Christopher Hitchens (get well soon) is also an agnostic, no matter how sure he is that there isn’t. Belief, no matter how strongly held, simply does not equal knowledge, and so I say again, we are ALL agnostics.
That isn’t how the word is generally used, though, so we should stick to the common definition, which is certainly serviceable. Basically, when we call someone an agnostic, what we mean is that this person accepts or is aware of this universal condition of incomplete knowledge. Pat Robertson does not accept this condition, and so in this narrower sense he is not an agnostic, whereas Christopher Hitchens does and is.
Atheism is much simpler. If you don’t believe there’s a god, you’re an atheist. That is all the word means. Some people will attribute other qualities to atheists: that we are all political liberals, that we all accept evolutionary theory and Big Bang cosmology, that none of us are religious, etc. These allegations are false, or at least not uniformly true. The only thing all atheists have in common is that we don’t believe there are any gods. For example, what word besides “atheist” accurately describes both Karl Marx and Ayn Rand?
“I don’t believe there’s a god” is a negative statement. It is not a belief, but rather the absence of one. Sometimes, however, atheists use the related positive statement that “there is no god.” For most of us this is just verbal shorthand; it is inaccurate and we know it, but it is easier to say “there is no god” than “there is no evidence that there are gods and so I don’t believe in them.” If you polled every atheist in the world and asked us which of those two statements is the better summation of our beliefs, the majority would pick the latter, but in everyday conversation we don’t want to use all the extra words.
A small minority of us would still cling to the former, and of course it would not be proper to call those people agnostics under the common definition. Understand, though, that the statement “there is no god” is a belief masquerading as a fact, just the same as when a fundamentalist avers that Jesus was the son of God. It may actually be a fact that there is no god, but we don’t know that for sure; in fact, if it is true we will never positively know it. Any gods that actually exist could easily prove their existence (and the fact that they don’t should be a lot more troubling for people than it is), but if none exist there will never be any proof. The atheists who aver this belief as fact are just as irrational as fundamentalists, and I suspect that most of these “former atheists” you hear preaching on the radio now and then were this sort of atheist before their conversion. If you believe one thing for no reason, it is very easy to start believing other things for no reason. In the absence of evidence, the only rational position is a lack of belief.
And this is my point: although not all atheists are also agnostic, all rational atheists are. Furthermore, I think it would be fair to say that all or at least most rational agnostics are also atheists. It is certainly possible to admit that you don’t know whether God exists or not and also that you believe He does, but the statement is inherently irrational. Again, the two words are not identical but there is and should be a lot of overlap, so why on Earth would we argue about “Atheism vs. Agnosticism”? Isn’t that like arguing “Whiskey vs. Wine”? Can’t I love both?
For political reasons we have placed additional, artificial definitions on these words. Self-described atheists deride those less vocal with the word “agnostic,” and self-described agnostics lament the militancy of “atheists.” Don’t use “atheist” to mean “radical” and “agnostic” to mean “moderate.” Just say “radical” and “moderate.” This discussion will go nowhere if we can’t even say what we mean.

Last Words

2010-07-17T17:46:00.003-04:00

So a week or so ago I was cruising YouTube, which I always enjoy, and came across a video by a user named Oallos1 (“o allos” is Greek for “the other,” so we’ll call him “The Other One” or “TOO”) called Famous Atheists Last Words Before Dying. There’s an apostrophe missing, and the poster could probably have left out the words “Before Dying,” since that’s the commonly understood meaning of the phrase “last words,” but I watched it anyway. You can, too, if you like (or read one of the many identical blog post; I don’t know who is swiping from whom), and then meet me back here.
If you don’t want to I’ll give you an outline. It’s a bunch of quotations supposedly from the deathbeds of Voltaire, Hobbes, and others, shown over mournful music, followed by very serene last words from Christians (and King David, who of course was not a Christian, but they dig him). The idea is that all these atheists were, at the end, terrified of going to Hell (there’s a sub-plot of general despair as well). I wondered, “Why are all these people so scared of going to a Hell they don’t believe in? Perhaps I should look into this more closely.” And it’s Saturday and I have nothing to do, except that I’m gonna make an omelet and fried potatoes in a bit, so I thought I’d do a little research. What did I find? Well, read on.
He starts with Voltaire, a personal favorite, in despair: “I am abandoned by God and man…I shall go to hell.” Later in the video he gives another Voltaire deathbed quote: “I have swallowed nothing but smoke…I have intoxicated myself with the incense that turned my head.” I’m not sure which of those words is supposed to be the last.
Voltaire, of course, was not an atheist but a Deist. He rejected Christianity, not God. I suppose a committed Christian might not appreciate the difference, but Voltaire did. Three months before his death (when he was already very ill) he wrote “I die loving God, adoring my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.” His actual last words were to a priest, come to solicit a last-minute confession to save his soul, and they were “For God’s sake, let me die in peace.” There is also his apocryphal deathbed utterance to a priest upon being asked to renounce Satan: “This is no time to be making enemies.” I hope that’s true. It’s so like him.
These are the facts (not counting the Satan bit) of Voltaire’s death. They don’t jibe that well with the quotations TOO uses, do they? So what’s the source here? Well, these words were part of a longer conversation reported years later by Voltaire’s doctor, a long deathbed screed that I’ve included here if you’d like to read it. There is no other source for them but the doctor. That doesn’t prove the doctor was lying, of course, but his account faces certain problems: these quotations are unlike Voltaire’s known statements, even those he was making at the same time; the doctor claims Voltaire had gone mad, an opinion no one else shared; the doctor reported this conversation in a private letter affirming his own faith, demonstrating a probable expectation that the words would never face public scrutiny; and most convincing, that Voltaire had a priest right there who could have “saved” him if he was worried, and he didn’t take advantage of it. I think the most likely conclusion is that the doctor was...well, we’ll say he was in error.
TOO includes other apocryphal or plainly untrue last words. Thomas Carlyle, for example, whose last word was “goodbye,” he has saying, “I am as good as without hope, a sad old man gazing into the final chasm.” I can find no documentation for this except that every fundamentalist site out there reports it faithfully. Thomas Paine’s deathbed recantation (in which he wishes that his Age of Reason, one of the most important documents in human history, had never been published) is a fabrication that didn’t appear until ten years after his death and was vigorously repudiated by those who had been present. TOO, though, happily recounts it.
The best of the bunch is this one from “Aldamont the Skeptic”: “My principles have poisoned my friend…my extravagance has beggared my boy…My unkindness has murdered my wife…and is there yet another hell ahead?” Whew, that’s pretty compelling. What’s that? You never heard of Aldamont? Don’t worry, the problem isn’t your ignorance, it’s TOO’s. You see, Aldamont never existed. He was a character in an 18th century novel by Edward Young, and is quoted here as if he were a real person. That’s why he’s my favorite.
Another along the same lines is this one from “Sir Thomas Scott, Chancellor of England” that reads, “Until this moment I thought there was neither God nor hell. Now I know and feel that there are both, and I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty.” That’s pretty straightforward, except for three things. First the correct title is “Chancellor of Britain,” although I suppose that if you go far enough back that might be the older equivalent. Second, the office is partly ecclesiastical in nature. Third, I have checked a list of all the Chancellors and there has never been one named Thomas Scott.
This is kind of serious, isnt it? The closest I could get with that name is a Sir Thomas Scott who served in Parliament and held a ton of other government positions (but not Chancellor!) in the 16th century. I don’t know for sure that this is who The Other One meant, but I could find no nearer match; all the others I found were ministers. This Scott was a Protestant and was enthusiastic about the persecution of Catholics. If this is the right guy, my guess is that the quote was made up (maybe by angry Catholics ). Also, there was Sir John Scott, Lord Eldon, who served two separate terms as Chancellor at the beginning of the 19th century. The guy who served in between was named Thomas (Erskine), so between them you have a Thomas and a Scott, and maybe TOO was just a bit sloppy. Regardless, none of these men were atheists, so again, this quotation was probably made up.
This video is full of people who weren’t atheists, actually. You have the Voltaire quotes above, of course, and TOO also mentions Edward Gibbon’s apocryphal last words (“All is dark and doubtful”), even though Gibbon was a Deist, alongside those of the Emporer Severus (“I have been everything, and everything is nothing”), who was a polytheist. He includes this bit from Gandhi: “My days are numbered. I’m not likely to live much longer, perhaps a year or more…For the first time in fifty years I find myself in the Slough of Despond…all about me is darkness…I am praying for light.” Gandhi, of course, was Hindu. To TOO there is apparently no difference between being an atheist and being non-Christian.
Of course, that doesn’t explain this quotation: “Oh, my poor soul! What will become of thee? Whither wilt thou go?” These are the alleged last words of Cardinal Mazarin, and as you may know, “Cardinal” was not his name but his title. He was one of the most powerful and influential clergymen of his day and, presumably, a Christian.
So this video is misnamed. It should be “Last Words of Famous Non-Christians (plus one or two Christians who didn’t believe hard enough).” TOO did not succeed in creating what he wanted to create. I left a very polite comment to that effect on his video, to which he responded by reporting me as a spammer. It turns out that he has reported every single comment to this video as spam. That’s why I wrote this, ‘cause I couldn’t write there. If he was trying to inspire people, well, he certainly succeeded in inspiring me.
Oh, well. The truth that TOO is trying to obscure is that human beings, no matter their religion, generally approach death with trepidation, for the same reason we pass a door into a dark room with care. We don’t know what’s on the other side. That room might hold a pretty girl, or a psycho-killer, or just some furniture we’ll stub our toes on. We might be afraid and we might not, but we tread carefully.
Mazarin (if this report, unlike the others, is true) is a Christian dying in fear, uncertain of what’s to come. Thomas Hobbes, whose last words “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark” TOO misquotes, is also uncertain. To me Hobbes sounds less fearful than Mazarin, probably because he didn’t believe in Hell and Mazarin did. It is not clear to me that a belief in Hell is a comfort at the end of life, and I bet I could find some other despairing quotes from dying Christians if I wanted to, but really, what sort of person wants to read of people dying in despair?
Also, even if all these quotes were accurate, TOO would have a weak argument here. Does being near death give us insight into the great mysteries of the universe? Not obviously. Consider all the people who slip into dementia at the end of their lives. But even allowing that it does, what then of non-Christians who faced death unafraid and unrepentant? What of Heinrich Heine, who refused a last confession with the memorable “God will forgive me. That’s his job”? What of Byron’s peaceful “Now I shall go to sleep. Goodnight,” or Darwin’s simple and elegant “I am not the least afraid to die.” Given all the bizarre deathbed stories about Darwin, I always find that refreshing. Considering how much last words vary on the subject, isn’t the best bet simply that the speakers knew no more at the end than they had in the middle of life? Isn’t it likely that none of this proves anything at all?
Personally I have always been fond of Bertrand Russell’s words on the subject, and though they weren’t his last they were at least definitely his, and we’ll let them be the last here:

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life, but I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

Seriously, it took five minutes.

2010-07-03T17:38:00.000-04:00

I should never ever read the comments on YouTube. It always hurts. There is no greater source of ignorance on the Web, with the possible exception of Yahoo! Answers.
I happened across one today where the commenter, one hennypenny247, said:

FREEDOM is a word I have NEVER heard from Obama’s mouth. For a man who so consciously uses words to redefine events, this omission has great meaning. It’s about time we all started talking about the missing, unspeakable F-word.

I am forced to assume from this comment that this woman (I’m guessing from the name that she’s a woman) didn’t hear Obama’s inaugural address:

Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and FREEDOM.

Also, she missed his famous Race Speech, the turning point in the Democratic primaries...

Those stories—of survival, and FREEDOM, and hope—became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.

and the big speech in Berlin during the campaign...

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning—his dream—required the FREEDOM and opportunity promised by the West.

and his message to Congress, the “not the State of the Union” speech from last year...

And a twilight struggle for FREEDOM led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

and his actual State of the Union from this year...

For America must always stand on the side of FREEDOM and human dignity.

and his speech in Cairo...

Moreover, FREEDOM in America is indivisible from the FREEDOM to practice one’s religion.

But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the FREEDOM to live as you choose.

The fifth issue that we must address together is religious FREEDOM…FREEDOM of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.

and the speech after the Fort Hood shootings...

We are a nation that guarantees the FREEDOM to worship as one chooses. And instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln’s words, and always pray to be on the side of God.

and his speech just two days ago on immigration.

Our founding was rooted in the notion that America was unique as a place of refuge and FREEDOM for, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “oppressed humanity.”

I’m sure there are more. This is just what I got in five minutes with Google, CTRL-F, and a bit of the ol’ cut-and-paste. Anyone with internet access (which, presumably, YouTube subscribers have) could have done the same. In FIVE MINUTES.
He uses the word “freedom” all the time. hennypenny may not have been listening because her ignorance is more comfortable than paying attention, but he still says it. She can argue that he doesn’t mean these things (as long as we have Guantanamo and renditions and the War on Drugs and illegal wiretaps and Justice Department lawsuits defending the National Day of Prayer I’m inclined to agree) but she can’t argue that he hasn’t said them.
In other words, her statement tells us nothing about Obama. All it says is that she hears only what she wants to hear. What argument does she think she’s winning?

Open Letter to the Gas Company

2010-06-14T01:15:00.001-04:00

1644 W. Grace St. #3
Richmond, VA 23220

June 13, 2010

Dear Gas Company,

Enclosed you’ll find my check for $144.77, which I can’t afford but am paying to avoid having my service cut off.
When I first got hooked up you folks charged me a ludicrous $235 ($35 hookup fee and $200 security deposit) for the privilege. Why a public utility with the full force of City government behind it needs to charge this fee, so much greater than private companies charge for comparable services, is a question I have not yet found an answer for.
Still, having no choice, I have been paying that ridiculous fee off in installments. However, the installments have been very large and I’ve had trouble keeping up, in spite of the fact that I’ve kept my actual usage to around $30/month. In other words, I am behind in my payments exactly because of the security deposit you charged in case I fell behind in my payments. If you hadn’t charged me that, my payments would have been on time and in full every month.
Now you write that if I don’t send you $144.77 by the 21^st you will disconnect my service and I’ll have to pay another deposit and hookup fee to start it up again. So, to summarize, you charge an outrageous deposit as security against my not paying my bill, which causes me to be unable to pay my bill, and if I fall far enough behind you’ll charge me another security deposit and I’ll fall even further behind, and we’ll be in a perfect cycle of you getting an extra $235 every few months. This instead of you simply charging me the fees for what I actually use, fees I would be able to pay.
I confess that it’s a pretty clever, if soulless, scam. I wish I had thought of it myself.
Anyway, here’s your $144.77. Assuming I don’t starve to death in the meantime, you’ll get the rest of your money next month. Until then I am apparently

Utterly yours,

Richard James Winters ^III

I Couldn't Do It Any Worse

2010-06-07T15:41:00.001-04:00

I just had to take one of those online personality tests on a job application. You know, the ones I always fail. One of the last questions was this one: You do not fake being polite (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree).
Now, tell me if I’m wrong about this, but there’s no way to fake being polite. You either are polite or you aren’t. You might be polite even though you don’t feel like being polite, but even so, you are actually being polite. The question is therefore meaningless, and so what the hell am I supposed to say? Should I strongly agree because I am not a fake, or should I strongly disagree because I am always genuinely polite?
If someone is going to take upon himself the responsibility of trying to establish a stranger’s personality through a few questions, doesn’t he also have the responsibility of making sure those questions make sense? Maybe I should apply for THIS guy’s job.

A bit of history

2010-05-27T22:07:00.000-04:00

I got involved in a discussion yesterday on the Chess.com message boards. Someone started a thread titled, “Is Chess Racist?” The guy was asking if racism is the reason that the White pieces always move first. The answer is no, though certainly people are free to interpret things however they like. And I thought the story of how this tradition started might interest some of you, so I’m reporting it here.
Most people, of course, came on the thread and told the OP (original poster) that he was an idiot for even asking the question, or saying that the people calling the OP an idiot were idiots themselves (whenever the word racism is used publicly this happens). A few people replied thoughtfully, though. One guy in particular seemed to be carrying the day before I got there. He had responded that, no, it isn’t racist, since the game was invented in India, modernized (to a great extent) in Persia, and introduced to Europe by the invading Moors. All these people were darker than Europeans, so it wouldn’t make sense for racism to be behind this tradition. This argument sounds pretty good if you don’t know the history of the game, but unfortunately it’s invalid. See, the Persians etc. had no tradition of White always moving first. That tradition is only about two hundred years old, and it originated in Europe, in the earliest chess clubs of London and Paris. This sounds bad for folks who don’t want the tradition to be racist, but hear me out before you judge.
See, here’s what happened. You know how, before a football game, there’s a coin toss, right? Most people think that the team that wins the toss automatically gets the ball first, and then the losing team chooses which goal to defend, but that isn’t true. The winning team can either choose to kick off or receive, or choose which goal to defend. The losing team then gets to choose on the other option. But since almost everyone always chooses to receive the opening kickoff, it’s easy to assume that winning the toss=having the ball first, and losing the toss=choosing the direction.
In those early Continental clubs, something similar happened. Before a game, the players would toss a coin, just like football teams. The winner of the coin toss could either go first, or choose which set to play with. Now, going first is a much bigger advantage in chess than in football. The player who goes first starts off with initiative. He’s always one step ahead, unless the player moving second is clever enough to wrest control of the board from him. It takes more work to win, in other words, as the second player. Given that, you would expect the winner of the coin toss to always elect to go first.
However, that isn’t what happened, for two reasons. First, the Black pieces were considered lucky; it was a very prevalent superstition at the time among this small group of players. Second, the theory of the game was more primitive at the time than it is today, and going first wasn’t quite the overwhelming advantage it is now. So, many times the winner would grab up the lucky darker set, leaving the loser to go first. Even if the winner of the toss did elect to go first (the savvier move, obviously), the loser would then “even the odds” by taking the lucky black pieces. So, in practically every game, White went first. And eventually, realizing this, they just streamlined matters by making that a rule: one player would have the privilege of the first move, balanced by using the “inferior” white set; the other player, using the “superior” black set, would start off on the defensive.
So, the White pieces go first because they were actually considered less desirable. And these were the people who gave us the game we play today. They would eventually form FIDE, the international governing body of chess, and they would hold the first-ever World Championship tournaments. Even though there weren’t very many of them, their influence is widely felt, because we still play by the rules they set up (the FIDE rulebook is still the standard), including this silly, superstitious one. Whether the players involved were racist or not is an open question; the rules themselves, however, aren’t racist at all.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day

2010-05-26T12:22:00.002-04:00

So, the first annual “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” was a few days ago. I had my entry ready, but what I forgot was that I have no way to digitize it, so I had to wait ‘til I went out to Mama’s so I could use the scanner at her library. Also, I had no art supplies, because I’ve been broke for so long, and did it in twenty minutes with a four-for-69-cents ballpoint pen. So, it’s crap and it’s late, but here it is:

In case you missed all the news about this for the past three weeks or so, it all started when those jackasses at South Park decided to include Muhammad in an episode. Now, of course, it is forbidden under Sharia for anyone to make any visual representation of the Prophet (in fact, if you want to get right down to it, Muslims aren’t supposed to make visual representations of any living thing whatsoever), so Parker and Stone got around this by dressing him in a bear costume. Yeah, I didn’t ask.
Anyway, there were the predictable death threats and people acting crazy and Comedy Central ended up editing him out of the episode. A cartoonist in Seattle was offended by this censorship and declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.” Then she chickened out after she got some death threats (actually, to be fair, “chickened out” is the way most people would react in that situation) but the idea had taken on a life of its own, and so it kept going in her absence.
It isn’t really about the religion itself, but about censorship and the particularly bloody and ludicrous version of it practiced by Muslims. All Americans should hate censorship (though I’m fully aware that not enough actually do). Since that was the battle being fought, most participants tried not to be disrespectful in their representations. They just drew, you know, a guy in a keffiyeh and beard. Their point is that if you’re offended enough by that to threaten to kill someone you are being unreasonable, and they’re right.
I’ve been going back and forth on this, about whether I should be placatory or not, and although I can see the point of the organizers, I finally decided to be offensive. Not as offensive as I could be, but frank and contentious. I know I am trying to be a better person and maybe I made the wrong decision, but before you judge me I ask you to remember this: we’re not talking about the censorship practiced by ignorant school board members, odious as that is. We’re talking about the censorship practiced by the people who killed Theo Van Gogh, the people who have hounded Ayaan Hirsi Ali around the world, the ones who set fire to girls’ schools and keep the firemen away ‘til everyone inside has burned to death. In my opinion those people deserve to be offended, every minute of every day, until they either stop doing stupid shit or brighten the world by leaving it. I’m doing my part.

Doors close and I'm looking for windows

2010-05-16T23:49:00.000-04:00

I mentioned that I am applying at the Valentine (see the last post). Fact is, I’ve been dropping applications and résumés all over town, because Assanté’s is no longer a viable job.
When I first started working at the pizza place I was working nights, as you’ll remember. The shifts were ten to twelve hours long, which sucked, and the place was crazy busy, and at the end of the night I’d be beat to shit. But, I also made crazy money, and three shifts a week would give me more than enough to live on, and four in effect made me rich, by my own standards (which I admit are not very high).
I wanted to work days, though. First, the place manages to do great business in large part because we deliver to neighborhoods that other places refuse to deliver to. Some of these places are pretty dangerous, and in fact last week two drivers were robbed at night, in separate incidents. Also, although days do sometimes get quite busy, they generally aren’t enough to make me crazy, whereas at night I’m crazy pretty much from the moment I walk in the door.
I managed to convince Chef, the old GM, to switch me exclusively to days. I was working four days a week; obviously I would prefer to work only three, but day shift drivers work shorter shifts, so we need more of them. If you work four day shifts, you can kind of scrape by. I haven’t spent money on anything but groceries and bills since I moved into 1644, but I’ve been making it.
We have a new GM now, though. The new guy is keeping me on days, but he’s only giving me three shifts a week. There’s another day shift driver who used to get two shifts, but she has convinced him to give her another, so I’ve lost one. I noticed yesterday that she was asking him for a fourth day, so I might possibly lose another shift.
By my calculations, I need to make $284 per week in order to eat, drink, smoke, and pay my bills. I would like to make more, so that I have money to buy DVDs and things to furnish my lovely new apartment, but that’s the baseline that I need just to survive. Working three days I make only about $250 a week, and that’s only if business is good and folks are tipping; on slow weeks (like this past one) it ends up being closer to $200. That obviously is not going to work, so I’ve been looking for a new job. I haven’t made a judgment as to whether I want something I can do a couple of days a week, between driving shifts, or something full-time so I can quit the joint altogether. I might be restricted by what jobs are available and what hours they want to give me.
I’ve been a few places this past week, and nothing has looked particularly promising. However, I did get an application for a video store, just a few blocks from my apartment. A job in a video store would be perfect for me, given how much I love movies. I love working in libraries because I’m surrounded by books all day, and being surrounded by movies would be equally groovy. Also, my extensive knowledge of lesser-known pictures would let me recommend things to people that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise, so I would be as good for the place as it would be for me. I’m going to take the application and turn it in tomorrow.
I hope that the same woman is there that was there when I got the application. She is, I would guess, a year or two older than me, attractive, and seemed very charming. She was slender and graceful and dark with just a few strands of grey, and her eyes were lively and merry, and maybe she loves movies as much as I do. I will try to be very charming myself, because I need the job, but also because I really just want to charm her. I will wear a button-down shirt, because I don’t want to look like a bum, but I will wear it open with one of my many B-movie shirts visible under it, to advertise my love of the obscure, the overlooked gems and diamonds-in-the-rough of independent film. I would be happy to work there five or six days a week, but at the least I’m hoping that I can wrangle a shift or two. Even if I got the job at the Valentine, I would want to be able to put in a few hours at the video store.
I am hoping for the best on a couple of fronts, you see. Once again, wish me luck!

An appreciation: Lance Henriksen

2010-05-05T21:50:00.001-04:00

It’s likely, dear reader, that you won’t recognize the name “Lance Henriksen.” He is not the world’s most famous actor, but he is one of its more interesting ones.
He dropped out of school and left home when he was 12. He hitchhiked across the country, making his way as best he could. He was illiterate ‘til he taught himself to read at age 30 by studying movie scripts. A few years later he started turning up in “small but important” roles in some pretty well-regarded movies. He appeared in Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Right Stuff, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then he turned in a good performance as Sergeant Neff in Damien: The Omen II and seems to have realized, “Hey, it’s cooler to have big parts in small movies than to have small parts in blockbusters.”

He’s perfect for the Bs. He is not stereotypically handsome but striking, compelling, with a gravelly voice and drawn face with eyes that seem impossibly deep, eyes that you cannot lie to, because they see every part of you. He could never be a “leading man” type because Hollywood is stupid, but he has a tremendous screen presence that demands your attention. As soon as he appears on screen he adds depth, dignity, and honesty to whatever he’s in, and more often than not, whatever he’s in has desperately needed plenty of all three.
It’s by appearing in cult films and shows that he’s made his name, as a homicide detective in The Terminator (the title role was actually written for him, but Arnold Schwarzenegger ended up being cast instead), as the android Bishop in Aliens (he’s the only actor besides Sigourney Weaver to appear in more than one of those films), and as the sociopathic leader of a gang of manhunters in Hard Target, one of the many modern adaptations of “The Most Dangerous Game.” He also has many TV credits, including most notably a three-year star turn as the semi-psychic investigator Frank Black in the TV show Millenium, a sort of spinoff of The X-Files that the critics loved and nobody else but me watched.
Of course, for each of these projects there’s been a Piranha 2: The Spawning or a Stone Cold or a Man’s Best Friend. He’s played more than 150 parts on the big screen and the small, sometimes in classics, mostly in pieces in which he was the only thing worth watching.

Take his role as Ed Harley in Pumpkinhead, one of the more memorable 80s B-horror pictures. Harley is a small-town storekeeper whose young son is killed in a hit-and-run accident by a bunch of idiot teenagers vacationing from the big city (it is, after all, a B-horror from the 80s). He turns to the creepy-ass local witch for help, and she summons Pumpkinhead, a demonic spirit of vengeance, to punish the kids. But once the demon starts its rampage Harley realizes the horror he’s unleashed and brings the monster down, saving the kids (well, some of them) at the cost of his own life.
It was a pretty clever idea for a movie, plus which it was a welcome non-slasher in the heyday of the slasher film (I love slashers, but sometimes you like a little variety). Still, it was cheaply made, not terribly well-written, and had a less-than-stellar cast outside of Henriksen. But he really elevates the whole picture. His grief, his determination, and his integrity are a physical reality to you as you watch him. He demands that you take his little movie seriously, and in the end you do. As I say, it’s a memorable picture, but really only because of him.
That’s the way he is. Like Boris Karloff before him he is a professional who treats every movie as if it matters. No matter what he’s in, no matter whether it’s any good or not, he shows up to work every day and gives everything he’s got, and that really comes through on screen. He does his job as well as it can be done, no matter what it is, and really that’s about the highest compliment you can pay a man in any line of work.
Anyway, Henrikson turned 70 today. I hope that wherever he is (and wherever he is, you can be sure he’s working) he had an excellent day. Everybody, raise a glass.

Me, Mos, and Zooey

2010-04-21T11:55:00.001-04:00

I had become a fairly well-known artist, and was having my first really big-time show in a fancy gallery in a converted loft in Manhattan. Everybody who was anybody had turned out to see my newest work. Zooey Deschanel was there, with purple streaks dyed into her hair and too much mascara on her eyes, and we were quite taken with each other. I won’t go into a lot of detail on that.
Mos Def was there, too, and he was telling me how much he enjoyed my work. I told him that I loved his stuff as well, and took him to see a particular painting. I explained to him that I had been listening to Black on Both Sides when I painted it, and so really he was the inspiration for the work. For some reason this made him angry, and he told me that I shouldn’t be drawing inspiration from him, that my inspiration should come from inside me and from nowhere else. I tried to explain that nobody (not even me) is complete unto himself and we are all influenced by the world we live in and the people we share it with, but he was having none of it and stormed off offended.
So, if by some chance Mos Def is out there reading this, dude, what was that all about?

In Defense of B Movies

2010-03-15T12:58:00.000-04:00

I post on the message boards at IMDb, of course, because I love movies very much and like to discuss them. And I post frequently on the boards of bad B movies, because I am especially fond of those.
A couple of years ago I posted about Coleman Francis’ epic Red Zone Cuba that I wish they would release it on DVD. Francis only ever made three films, the oddly magnificent Beast of Yucca Flats, the slow-moving and ugly Skydivers (should have earned an Oscar for most ludicrously over-the-top use of stock footage), and this meaningless mess of a film. I wondered why they didn’t just release the three as a box set for bad movie fans everywhere.
Yesterday someone posted on my thread there, and I reprint their post and my reply here:

Jellyfish19: Why exactly do you buy crappy movies? Don't know where to spend your money? I don't understand people like you...

OgreVI: It isn’t all bad movies. Transformers, for example, I have no interest in. When someone has the money and the skilled crew and everything he needs to make a good movie and doesn’t, then that bothers me.
But these movies I’m talking about are different. They were made by people who had no money, no name, and (in some cases) no talent. There are and have been many filmmakers who weren’t part of the system for whatever reason, who had no resources. They just loved movies, and they had something to say, an idea that they wanted to share, and they struggled and connived and worked their fingers to the bone to get their visions put on film. In the case of someone like George Romero or Hal Hartley the final product can be magnificent. In the case of someone like Coleman Francis the final product turns out to be pretty lousy. But it’s entertaining in its ineptness, and also it is possible to respect the work and the desire that went into making it, even if they were poorly aimed, isn’t it?
So, when I talk about this movie, or Francis’ Beast of Yucca Flats, which in its way is a kind of bizarre triumph, or others like the mighty Plan 9 or Manos, I don’t think I’m really talking about the worst movies ever. I call them that ‘cause it makes sense to do so, but any of them is far superior to, say, Catwoman or Epic Movie, or even to many good big-budget studio films, because they are testaments to human will and determination, and because they were labors of love.

And that’s it, in case anyone was wondering.

This all went down on my permanent record

2010-03-09T15:45:00.001-05:00

I just had my first real walk since January 24th. It is 65 and sunny today, far too beautiful to waste time driving, and I had to go to the library to get a new library card, so I hoofed it. The library is on Franklin and covers the whole block between First and Second Streets. For Huntingtonians, that distance is roughly equivalent to walking from Towers West to the Kroger’s on First Street & Seventh Avenue (although, you may say, "If I was at Towers West I would walk to the Kroger’s on Fifth Avenue instead, because it’s closer," to which I reply "Shut up."). Not a huge walk, but a decent one, enough to get the blood flowing.
I discovered upon arriving at the library that I owed a very old fine. That was not a surprise, though the amount ($23.40) was a bit high, but lower than the $40 or so I had feared. And, since they’d been waiting for that money since 1996, I didn't complain.
It was interesting to look at my old record. The address they had on file for me was 2127 W. Main Street, and to the best of my recollection (which I admit is not that good) I’ve never lived on Main Street at all. Upon reflection, though, Kenny and Andrea had an apartment right around there, and though I don’t remember their address it could be that one. At the time I was more or less homeless, so it would make sense that I would give them an address where any letters would ultimately reach me.
The fines were for Camus and Dorothy Parker, a good combination, and reflected my failure to ever actually return The Fall, one of the most important formative books of my consciousness. And I did finally discover that they had a record of my last real address in town, at 206 N. Lombardy.
The whole thing was sort of a time capsule. I should have asked for a copy; it would be interesting to see if they had the place at Harrison and Floyd, or Grace and Ryland, or Kimmy’s place on Monument or any of the other places I slept at but didn’t actually live, listed for me. It would be like an old directory of my dearest friendships. I always think of these things too late.
I paid my fine, which I can’t really afford and which took forever because there aren’t many 15-year-old fines that get paid and nobody was sure of the procedure. Still, I really wanted a couple of books and so I put up with the time and expense. In particular I wanted (and checked out) Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which I’ve been meaning to read for twenty years and now seems like a good time for it. I also got three mysteries: a Nero Wolfe, a Brother Cadfael, and the second Rumpole Omnibus. I should be happily entertained for several days. And I learned that for this particular walk I should in future allow about 90 minutes, assuming I have a reasonably clear idea of what books I’m after before I leave the house.
So, I find myself this afternoon with a sense of accomplishment and slight nostalgia. I hope everyone is having a good day. I myself am about to leave for work, after I drink my belated Breakfast Beer and get started on the Eco. Love to all.

Ode to absent-mindedness

2010-03-04T16:19:00.000-05:00

I have figured out what the next thing I buy for the new place should be: one of those boards. You know, those boards, with a name that I do not know. They’re white, and they hang on the wall or whatever, and you can write on ‘em with a marker that’s attached to it by a string, and then wipe it off with a paper towel and start over. What do they call those things?
Anyway, yes. Parking is even more difficult at the new place than I expected it to be. Last night I had to park in the Lowe’s lot on the other side of Broad (apparently they are used to this and don’t even bother to put up “Customers Only” signs or to tow anyone). This afternoon I had to park two blocks away, though at least I’m on my own street. Being powerfully absent-minded, I am sure that someday I’ll park the truck and then overnight forget where I’ve parked and be unable to go to work. So, I figure, if I have one of those boards hanging on the door I can write, for example, “Grace Street, eastbound side, between Meadow and Allison” as soon as I get home. Clever, yeah?
Also (more from the front lines of absent-mindedness), I must get keys made. Both my apartment door and the outside door lock automatically when they’re shut, and for someone like me that is a disaster waiting to happen. I prob’ly don’t have many more trips out of the house before I lock myself out, so I think I’m going to make a half-dozen copies of both keys and hide them all over the property, plus giving copies to basically everyone I know who lives within walking distance. I have already decided on a couple of decent hiding places, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t publish them on the Internet.
I went in to work at one today as scheduled, only to find that they’d changed the schedule without notifying me so that I work five to close tonight. Aggravating. If they want me not to quit they are not going about it the right way. So I came home, read, had an excellent sammich, and now it’s time to go back. Late night tonight, but at least I am well-fed and rested. Love to all.

The Ballad of 1644, Verse One

2010-03-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

Well, I’m in the new place. I’ve got internet access on my own computer, which is amazing (it spent more than an hour this morning updating and backlogging all the podcast subscriptions I’ve missed).
The move did not go smoothly. We got the truck with all my stuff in it from New Kent and drove into town, and only when we got here did I realize that I had not brought the keys to the place. We had to go back out to New Kent to get them, and the delay cost us one of our workers, a big healthy fella who was offered a football scholarship at Texas A&M and who prob’ly could have unloaded the truck by himself in twenty minutes. Mama had to come back into town with us and sit in the van while we unloaded, and we were at it ‘til after eleven last night. Then we returned the truck. I was dead tired but determined to unpack at least enough to make the place a home before I went to sleep, so I was up ‘til three or four.
I got the place in pretty good shape, though. All the furniture is tentatively arranged, and I got the kitchen stuff in place and my clothes hung up or folded and put away. I tried to hang a few posters, but couldn’t. It turns out that the walls in here are too hard for thumbtacks. Thumbtacks just break on these walls. After much work I managed to get the top of one poster (the Audrey Hepburn I’ve written about before, which I wanted to be the first thing I saw when I woke up) fastened, but not the bottom, so it was still curled up. Fortunately, it’s on expensive, heavy paper, and so it unrolled under its own weight while I slept, and this morning had fallen enough that her eyes were peeking out at me. Better than nothing.
I went to Lowe’s, right across the street, and got heavy brass tacks and a tack hammer today and set to work hanging posters. About a third of those broke, too, but I got most of the posters up after much hard work. There are a few left; I’ll get those tomorrow while my neighbors are at work so I don’t drive everyone crazy. It’s amazing, by the way, how little wall space all my posters take up. I will enjoy collecting more things to cover the walls with (and a stepladder so they can go right up to the ceiling).
There are only a half-dozen or so boxes left to unpack, and then all that’s left is to go to Goodwill in search of bedroom furniture and stock the pantry. I have already had my first company; my friend Stephanie came by and we ate Chinese takeout and talked for two hours or so. I introduced her to Aron Ra (hard to believe that, as a science teacher, she hadn’t heard of him), and showed her around the apartment. She pointed out that my front closet is so big (and has the same high ceilings as the rest of the apartment) that I could put up my Christmas tree in there next year.
That’s one of the cool little things I’m discovering about the place now that I have leisure to really explore it. Like, for instance, I have a back door with a patio and steps leading down into our fenced-in yard. Someone at some point in the past built a wood-plank walkway along the outside of the building to the steps from the bathroom window. It is not strong enough to hold a person, but is a perfect walkway for a cat. So I’ll be able, once it gets warm, to leave that window open and Jeannie will be able to come and go as she pleases without me having to let her in and out. In fact, I can leave it open for her even while I’m not here, since no human can get to it (and anyway there are bars on it). Isn’t that excellent?
In short, all is well here. The place is as beautiful as I remembered, a little chilly, but roomy and lovely. I am settled and comfortable, and regret only that sooner or later I will have to leave it long enough to go to work. I even discovered a new wine that I like, a California cabernet sauvignon called “Bohemian Highway” (if you wanted to pick two random words to make me interested in your product, those two would be good choices) which is inexpensive and tasty. My day has been a source of spiritual fulfillment, in short, and I hope the same is true of each of you. Love to all.

The World is a Better Place Today

2009-12-15T16:09:00.000-05:00

I used to live with a woman named Rhonda. She was pretty generally excellent, and we were together for four years. I have fond memories and no complaints about her.
When she was a little girl she used to stay with a family friend named Opal while her parents were at work. Opal was not actually related to Rhonda, but she seemed like a grandma so Rhonda called her “Mamaw Opal,” even after she had grown up. Opal was the sort of old woman that the movies think Appalachia is full of: tough but big-hearted, desperately poor, bright but barely literate, and of course devoutly religious.
When Rhonda was a little girl Opal was already old, so thirty years later when I knew her, she was very old indeed, and very sick. When her illness got so bad that she couldn’t bear it anymore, she wrote a letter to world-famous faith healer Oral Roberts, asking him to pray for her. She believed that he had the power to heal her, even from that distance. He wrote back, full of sympathy for her suffering, and told her that of course he’d be happy to pray for her, provided she sent him twenty dollars.

I hear that Oral Roberts died today. I wish I could have been there.

The Meaning of Life?

2009-12-14T18:52:00.001-05:00

I was at Richard Dawkins’ YouTube channel last night. I happened to notice in the comments that someone of the Catholic persuasion had posted a short comment on the page. It read, “I just have one question for all you atheists: what’s the meaning of life?”
This is not the first time I’ve encountered this question, of course. Religious folks, when they find out I’m not one of them, frequently ask it. I’ve never had an answer, not because it’s a tough question, but because as far as I can tell it’s nonsense.
The question is not “What must I do to live a good life?” It is not, “What are the essential requirements for a good life?” It is not “What is the purpose of life?” Any of those I could answer. But the question is “What is the meaning of life?” I first heard the question as a child, and didn’t understand it. Three decades later, I still have no idea what they’re talking about.
I could tell you the meaning I take from a story or a painting or a poem or song or even an insightful riddle, because those things at their best are analogous to life and can help us see it more clearly. Life itself, though, isn’t analogous to anything at all; it doesn’t mirror things, other things mirror it. It seems to me that asking the meaning of life is as, well, meaningless as asking what color life is, or what life smells like. It’s every color and every smell. It is every shape and every speed and every distance. It’s all the equations and all the emotions and all the energy and every possible meaning, wrapped up together.
So I’m asking you folks to clarify this for me. I am not going to ask last night’s questioner. I’m not getting into any discussion of any kind on any subject in the YouTube comments section. That way madness lies. So clue me, Blogger folks. What are people really asking when they ask, “What’s the meaning of life?”

If I Was God

2009-12-04T03:37:00.002-05:00

π isn’t mentioned in the Bible at all. The reason for this is simple: the Jews had never heard of it. At the time the Old Testament was written the Egyptians knew what π was, and so did the Persians, but the Jews hadn’t discovered it yet. In fact, reading the Bible proves that they didn’t know about π, because the dimensions of circles are misrepresented on a couple of occasions.
If I was God, here’s what I would’ve done. Back when Moses was writing the Pentateuch (figuratively speaking) I would have said this to him:

“Okay, I’m gonna dictate and you write. I’ll go slow, ‘cause you won’t know what I’m talking about and in this case accuracy is important. Okay, you have a circle, right? And there’s a distance across the circle, and there’s a distance around the circle. Now, the ratio between these two distances is an irrational number that will eventually be known as π. I call it “irrational” because it doesn’t have a precise value. The first few digits of π are 3.14159, but you can keep computing it forever and never reach the end.
Here’s the thing: a few thousand years from now people will have these machines that can do really complicated math really fast, and some of them will start computing π more accurately than any person could. Eventually they’ll compute it out to a trillion digits. When they do, the next sequence of one hundred digits beginning with the one-trillion-and-first will be…”

And then I’d give him those digits. I’m God, I can do that, right? I think I’d replace a big chunk of Numbers with a series of these things that people would discover for themselves gradually, so that continuing discoveries would lead to more and more proof that I was real. You know, like “the Creation story is allegorical, actually I designed natural systems that caused life to diversify” or “the Earth (which is much bigger than you think it is) is a nearly spherical object orbiting the Sun (which is A LOT bigger than you think it is), and the stars are just suns that are really far away.” And each one would have a detail that ancient man couldn’t possibly know, such as “the Earth averages 93 million miles from the sun.” That right there would be perfect proof that I really exist, with a new one every few generations so that there would always be one not too far from living memory. Also, I might throw in a few basic agricultural and engineering tips, because the people I’m actually directly speaking to could stand to learn a thing or two and it would improve my credibility if they were demonstrably more advanced than the surrounding cultures. It couldn’t hurt to remove a few of the uglier laws, either. I always had trouble with “God’s chosen people” being a bunch of vicious hillbillies. But π and the other proofs are what’s important.
Of course, accuracy (not to say believability) is not the Bible’s only problem, so also I would have had Jesus say something like this:

First, all men are created equal. I know slavery is all the rage right now, but believe me when I say that men should not own each other, or have power of life and death over each other, and they oughtta get a decent wage for an honest day’s work.
Second, when I said “all men are created equal” I was using poetic language typical of the times, but women are equal, too. Women are every bit as smart and capable as we are and have the same worth as human beings (yes, even if they don’t marry or have children). They deserve to choose their own paths in life, so don’t tell ‘em what to do, don’t treat ‘em like second-class citizens, don’t beat ‘em up, and if you rape one of ‘em you’re the bad guy, not her, and you’re the one that should be punished.
Third, the world is full of people. Many of them come from other countries, speak other languages, or are different colors. However, they are just as human as you are. They love their children and their grandparents, they feel joy and pain, and they deserve life and happiness just the same as you do. Treat them with respect. Remember the “created equal” bit? I’m not just saying that to hear myself talk.
Fourth, of course I’m starting a religion and I expect you guys to go out all over the world and talk to people about me. However, some of them will not believe you. You really don’t have to kill them for this. It’s okay. They just won’t go to Heaven. Isn’t that bad enough? Leave ‘em alone.
These things, of course, are on top of all the other things I’ve been saying about, you know, the whole “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” thing and also the “Do unto others” thing, that you could have picked up from any decent religion but are still really, really true. I know all this stuff sounds pretty radical to you right now, but remember that I am the Son of God and I can see the future. Trust me, this is the direction the world is heading in, and you guys will look really smart if you were first on the boat.

Bang! A few extra verses and the world would be a better place and most of the more trenchant (and true) criticisms of the Bible would become obsolete. In fact, it would be just about impossible to argue that Christianity wasn’t the one true religion. These two passages together would have given Christianity the prestige and moral authority it claims but doesn’t actually deserve. Just a few extra verses, brothers and sisters, and I wrote them all by myself. I’m just a guy. How is it that I thought of this and God didn’t?

I Know Who I Am

2009-10-02T11:57:00.000-04:00

So I’m reading The Dream of Reason by Anthony Gottlieb (ISBN 039332365X), which is a good book and I recommend it.
Here is his description of Epicureans (presented in opposition to the sternness and self-sacrifice typical of Stoics):

...men of easy tempers and of amiable disposition. Gentle, benevolent, and pliant; cordial friends and forgiving enemies; selfish at heart, yet ever ready when it is possible to unite their gratifications with those of others; averse to all enthusiasm, mysticism, utopias and superstition; with little depth of character or capacity for self-sacrifice, but admirably fitted to impart and receive enjoyment, and to render the course of life easy and harmonious.

My friends, can there be any doubt whatsoever that I am a born Epicurean? I should make a quiz out of this.

Of the Awesome Machinery of Nature

2009-09-26T14:23:00.000-04:00

I think this is the best thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube. I absolutely love it. Many thanks to Jackie for sending it to me.

Best use of Auto-Tune ever. Transcript of the lyrics:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has its own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange-sounding ideas

How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we've waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting

ssssssnake

2009-08-28T11:59:00.001-04:00

I had not realized it until just this very minute, but a sexy Romanian talking science definitely ranks among my favorite things.

Three Feet. Nine Years.

2009-07-06T13:09:00.000-04:00

Those of you who have only known me since I moved to Huntington don’t think of me as a football fan, I expect. I’ve only watched a few games since I moved here. The last one, I think, was the Super Bowl a few years ago between Pittsburgh and Seattle; my brother is a big Steelers fan, so I went and got drunk and cheered them on with him. I’ve watched probably a total of four or five games in the last several years, just because they happened to be on in the bar. I don't care about the game.
Before I moved here, though, I was really into football. I had an encyclopedic knowledge of players and stats going back to the forties, knew all the coaches, all the strategies. I was a fan of the Cleveland/Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams. In the seventies and eighties that was a pretty good life. We were always competitive, even though we didn’t win any titles, and there were always players to get excited about. I still have fond memories of Jack Youngblood and Eric Dickerson, Henry Ellard and Nolan Cromwell, Jerry Gray and Jackie Slater.
Then came the nineties, and suddenly we couldn’t win to save our lives. The whole decade, we were the worst team in football, a league-wide joke. They called us the “Lambs.” By 1999, I was mostly scar tissue from all the losing. Even the Bengals were better than us.
But then, in 1999, something magical happened. We drafted Tory Holt at WR to put across from Isaac Bruce, our lone All-Star who had suffered through some of the leanest years in pro football history. We traded for Marshall Faulk, the league’s smartest player and most dangerous runner. Our starting QB was lost for the year before the season even started, and our backup jumped into the starting lineup. His name was Kurt Warner, a nobody who had been bagging groceries in Iowa a few months before, and he began what looks like a Hall of Fame career. We cruised through the regular season with the most prolific and explosive offense the NFL had ever seen, and finally won our first championship since my father was in diapers. It was the greatest turnaround in pro sports history.
And, see, that’s why I stopped watching football. Nothing could ever be that good again. I tried to stay into it for a year or two, but it wasn’t sweet anymore. I had lost my dream, not by giving up on it, but by getting what I had wanted.
So, that night, January 30, 2000, was the last night I really enjoyed a football game. And what a game it was! We were playing the Tennessee Titans, the only team that had really beaten us all year long (we lost our last two regular season games while resting our starters, having already secured the home field). They, too, were a turnaround team, though they had never been as bad as us. They won on the strength of a tremendous defense and a piledriver of a runner named Eddie George, but they had something else. They had a kid at quarterback, like Warner in his first season as a starter. He was untested, rough, but supremely talented. His name was Steve McNair.
For three quarters we dominated the Titans, driving up and down the field, but they managed to keep us out of the end zone, and after three field goals we led only 9-0, despite having something like a 5-to-1 advantage in yards gained. Finally we broke through with a touchdown late in the third to make it 16-0, and the Titans finally abandoned their conservative game plan and turned McNair loose.
He was unstoppable. In my memory every play is the same; McNair drops back to pass, but our pash rush (the league’s best that season) would instantly collapse the pocket. Any other quarterback would be crushed under a pile of blue-clad bodies, but McNair would just step casually outside the rush. He was as untouchable as a ghost, and Ram after Ram flew past him grasping at empty air. Occasionally one would get to him, but McNair, as big and strong as any linebacker, would casually shrug him off like he was removing a raincoat and get back to business. He looked like a man among children. Sometimes he would scramble for a first down, sometimes he’d throw impossible, scrambling passes across his body to the other sideline, sometimes he’d find a man open far downfield. In this way he led them to two touchdowns (one with a missed conversion attempt) and a field goal to tie the game at 16.
But the league’s top offense had one more trick up its sleeve. On the very first play of our next drive, Warner, the nobody from Iowa, hit long-suffering Isaac Bruce for a lightning-bolt 73-yard touchdown, making the score 23-16. And so McNair walked onto the field one last time, two minutes to play and the whole season hanging in the balance.
So what did he do? The same thing he’d been doing, rolling out, scrambling, staying alive ‘til he could find the open man. He drove the Titans right down the field, with me screaming at my television “Jesus Christ, somebody tackle that man!” On the last play of the game, McNair hit Kevin Dyson on a crossing route inside the five, but linebacker Mike Davis made a miraculous tackle at the one as time ran out, and the Rams were (barely) world champions. Best Super Bowl ever.
I was elated, of course, but mostly relieved. It was very, very clear to me how lucky we were that football games are only 60 minutes long. That kid walked off the field without a trophy, without a ring, but he’d taken everything we could throw at him and just shouldered it aside, and had ended up a mere 36 inches from a title. We had won, but it was like they used to say about Bobby Layne, the great Detroit QB: he was never beaten, he just occasionally ran out of time.
Like I say, after that I never really enjoyed football again, and eventually stopped watching altogether, and so when I read this morning that McNair was murdered by his girlfriend this weekend, I was surprised at how moved I was by the news. I haven’t followed the game for years. I don’t know which team has his contract right now, or even whether he’s still on a roster anywhere in the league. At first glance it doesn’t make sense that this should affect me.
But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. It’s a shock, because it can’t be possible that anything could have killed him. That game, that last great game, is frozen in time for me. It was my last football game, and he was the hero of the story even in defeat. When I hear his name, I don’t think of whoever he has become over the last nine years. In my mind he is still that indestructible kid, powerful, unbowed, fearless. In my memory, forever, nobody can lay a hand on him.

Step Back for a Moment

2009-06-25T11:30:00.000-04:00

Lemme start by saying that I strongly dislike Mark Sanford. I think he’s a demagogue, an opportunist who is happy to sacrifice the welfare of the people of his state (particularly schoolchildren) to his own ambition. I find him extraordinarily cynical and willing to use specious reasoning and historical revisionism to get his way. In short, he strikes me as a bad governor and a bad man.
And, you know, the runup to Sanford’s confession was bizarre, and I followed it with some interest (though these days I can spare little attention for anything besides Iran). It was funny, the whole “he’s missing/he’s off writing/he’s in Atlanta/he’s hiking the Appalachian Trail/he’s in Argentina” thing. It was very off-the-wall, as is the man himself, and when I heard yesterday morning that the truth was coming out, that he was having an affair with a woman in Argentina (?!?), it promised to be the sort of entertaining news story that makes news-watching fun.
I’ve always felt that the personal lives of politicians should be considered separately from their work, the same as I feel about writers or musicians. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Sanford without digging into his relationships. But this story was just so odd, so over-the-top, that I confess to feeling a little charge of interest and even pleasure yesterday.
That changed when I started paying attention to the coverage. I don’t like the glee with which newspeople are springing on him right now. I don’t like that his hometown paper printed the e-mails Sanford sent to his lover, which are nobody’s business but theirs and should never have been published. I especially dislike the reading of these e-mails that Keith Olbermann gave on last night’s Countdown, in a voice that suggested he was auditioning to be Danielle Steele’s official audiobook narrator. I ended up fast-forwarding past them but saw enough to be very disappointed in Olbermann. I wanted to say to him, “Keith, have you never been in love?” I can’t imagine that any man of conscience (as KO seems to be) would air this and make light of it if he had ever felt this way himself.
More than that, I was impressed by Sanford’s press conference. Not “impressed” in the way people usually mean that word, but in the sense that it changed the way I looked at the whole thing. I mean, it was meandering and crazy, of course. Did anyone understand that whole “self” thing? It was so convoluted I can’t even quote it. But it was also very genuine, very honest, I thought, from a man not known for his honesty. I am not arguing that he deserves credit for being honest, and it doesn’t in any way absolve him. Still, he spoke extemporaneously, from the heart (unless he’s both far smarter and a better actor than I’ve previously given him credit for), and it meant something to me as I watched it. Compared to, say, John Ensign or Elliot Spitzer, he sounded human. He sounded lost.
Anyway, the point is this: I still dislike him just as much as I did yesterday, but what I saw up there was…well, a man in crisis, a man who doesn’t know where to turn or what to do, and it might sound dumb, but I’m just not comfortable laughing at a man in that position.
He’s lost his position with the RGA. He isn’t going to be President, or at least no time soon. He might even step down as Governor. And of course it goes without saying that his private life is in shambles. All of that is perfectly proper, and doesn’t cause me sorrow. Also, Sanford’s hypocrisy isn’t lost on me, and I understand the schadenfreude everyone’s feeling. It’s just that yesterday we all thought this was really funny. Today most still do, but me, I just don’t anymore.

Missouri?

2009-05-08T11:20:00.001-04:00

So Eric Cantor is a Virginian. He is one of the Congressional representatives from the Commonwealth. More than that, he represents the city of Richmond itself (well, part of it, anyway). As a result of this, I usually cut him a little more slack than I do most politicians. And his party certainly needs rebuilt, and it seems to me that the GOP could do a lot worse as far as young leadership goes. I definitely approve of this new “listening tour” he’s been going around on, though I don’t approve of some of the folks he’s bringing along.
Rush Limbaugh does NOT approve of this listening tour. He came on the radio and said that the GOP doesn’t need a listening tour, it needs a teaching tour. This is, of course, because the American people don’t actually know what’s good for them; they need Rush to tell them what to think.
That’s fine. I expect no better from Rush, and a week without him saying something stupid is like a week without a paycheck. What I was not prepared for, though, was that Cantor, upon hearing about Rush’s ludicrous but totally in-character statement, rushed to change his mind and point out that his traveling road show is not, in fact, a listening tour. I am outraged.
Mr. Cantor, you are a Virginian, representing our proud Commonwealth before the nation. Virginians do not take orders from, nor are we cowed by, people from inferior states. The last outsider to successfully knock us down was Ulysses S. Grant, and he had to bring three million friends to back him up. How dare you back down in the face of a fat-assed knuckleheaded blowhard from Missouri? Missouri, of all places! Where are your balls? Stonewall Jackson would have gutted the freak and got the hell on with business. I suggest you take a lesson from him.

Seven words. Seven Stresses. Seven Meanings.

2009-05-02T01:48:00.000-04:00

I’ve just been told that there are seven different ways to interpret the sentence “I never said she stole my money,” depending on which of the seven words is stressed. I thought it would make an interesting late-night intellectual exercise:

I never said she stole my money—I never said that, but other folks did, and I’m not saying they’re wrong.

I never said she stole my money—I have not accused her, but I might at any time in the future, depending on how contrite she is and how much I’ve had to drink. However, if she accuses me of not trusting her, I have an out.

I never said she stole my money—I am too much of a gentleman to accuse her of this. I think she did, but I would never say it out loud in the presence of the press (this is off the record, right?).

I never said she stole my money—My money was totally stolen, but that doesn’t mean she stole it. Coulda been that ugly dude and his pet monkey.

I never said she stole my money—She might have been just borrowing it. This is a deeply personal problem within our relationship that we’re gonna have to discuss, preferably in the absence of police.

I never said she stole my money—Maybe she stole some money, but it was somebody else’s.

I never said she stole my money—She stole my heart, my soul, my drugs, and my love of living, but not my money.

Any alternate explanations out there? Let’s hear ‘em!

Day Of

2009-04-04T11:45:00.000-04:00

April Fourth is kind of a big day in world history. I mean, look at all the important birthdays that fall on this day: baseball greats Tris Speaker and Gil Hodges; Poet Laureate Maya Angelou; newsman John Cameron Swayze (who hosted the first-ever television coverage of the presidential National Conventions in 1948); directors Eric Rohmer and Andrei Tarkovsky; actors Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Perkins (which makes watching Psycho part of the ritual of the day), Chloris Leachman, Hugo Weaving, and Heath Ledger; 80s hair-band dude Mick Mars (don’t laugh—he was actually a very talented guitarist); and legendary bluesman Muddy Waters. Also celebrating birthdays of a sort today are the City of Los Angeles (incorporated 4/4/1850) and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
Martin Luther King Jr. died on this day, which is always the big news each year. So did Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick the Great. The layout of the American flag that we use (13 stripes representing the original colonies, and one star for each state, which meant twenty stars at the time) was formalized on this day. The U.S. Senate declared war on the Central Powers in WWI. The treaty that formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was signed on this day. Hungary was liberated from the Nazis on this day, as was Addis Ababa (one of the coolest city names ever). Martin Luther (the original) was ordained a priest on 4/4/1507. 180 years later, also on this day, James II of England would formally declare freedom of worship in England. The Rhodes Scholarship was founded. “Dixie,” the marching song of the Confederate Army, was first played publicly. Sir Francis Drake landed safely after circumnavigating the globe. Ugly old Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia was opened on this day, but it has since been demolished, and I doubt anyone misses it. The World Trade Center was opened, too, a fact which is not as much fun as it used to be.
April 4th is kind of a big day in the continuing battle for equality in this country. The first female mayor in American history (Susanna Salter) took office in some Kansas backwater. The first Hispanic mayor also took office on this day (Henry Cisneros in San Antonio). And Sally Ride became the first woman in space.
In sports, well, Hank Aaron hit his 714th home run, but this time of year is for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Because of the way the schedule works, frequently either the Final or the semifinals are played on this day, so there’s been a lot of great basketball on April 4th over the years; the most notable moment is probably North Carolina State’s miraculous last-second victory over Houston, 4/4/1983.
Sticking with basketball history: Allan Houston, the slender, cerebral ballplayer who would star for the University of Tennessee and the Detroit Pistons before becoming one of the game’s best shooters (an incredible .402 career average on 3-pointers) while manning the 2-guard spot for my beloved New York Knicks and leading them into the Finals in 1999, was born on April 4th, 1971 in Louisville, Kentucky. And, many miles east of Louisville, at the Medical College of Virginia, I was born at about the same time. So, happy birthday to Allan Houston and to everyone else named above, and happy birthday to me, as well.

The Supreme Court wipes its ass with the Constitution.

2009-03-01T15:47:00.002-05:00

The Supreme Court, which has been responsible for many truly terrible decisions, has just handed down one of its worst, and stupidest, in the case of Pleasant Grove v. Summum.
It all started with the Summum, a Gnostic Christian sect which believes (among other things) that Moses came down off the mountain not with Ten Commandments, but with Seven Aphorisms; it was these that Moses broke, and the Commandments replaced them because “Man was not yet ready for the aphorisms.” Why one of these things is considered less likely than the other is a question I’m not going to ask at the moment.
Anyway, back in 1971, the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated a granite monument of the Ten Commandments to the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah. The city decided to display the monument in a park. And then, in 2003, the Summum tried to donate a similar monument of their Seven Aphorisms to the city to sit next to the earlier monument. The city said, “Thanks but no thanks.” So the Summum sued, saying that if the city was going to display the Ten Commandments they had to also display the Seven Aphorisms.
It’s a good argument, a sound logical argument, but as the WSJ LawBlog says, there was no way the Supreme Court was going to rule in their favor and “embrace a doctrine that says that any crackpot who shows up with a slab of granite and a pickup truck can demand that a monument get installed on, say, the National Mall.” Deciding to allow truly free and inclusive permanent religious expression in the park would put a tremendous strain on public lands all across the country. So the obvious solution is the preferable one (both practically and constitutionally) that religious monuments not be allowed on public land at all.
The Court, though, didn’t go for this. They (unanimously!?!) upheld the right of the city to display ONLY the Ten Commandments if they so chose. They couldn’t rule along the lines of the original decision by the city, that the older monument was simply the city permitting the free speech of the donor, because then they would be suppressing the free speech of the Summum. So they went off in a different, frightening direction.
Their logic, as summed up by Samuel Alito, is that the Government has the right to free speech, just like you have, and that in choosing the mainstream Christian monument over the Summum’s alternative, the local government was excercising that right. He wrote: “The placement of a permanent monument in a public park is best viewed as a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the free speech clause.”
Tell me that I am not the only one who is horrified by this. Tell me I am not the only one who realizes that only the people have the right to free speech. Freedom of speech does not have be to protected for the government, it has to be protected from the government, right?
Let me put it this way: Kansas Senator Sam Brownback is perfectly within his rights to say that all non-Christians are gonna burn in Hell forever. He’s wrong and offensive, but you’ll never hear me say that he doesn’t have the right. However, even if all of his colleagues agreed with him, they wouldn’t have the right to say this collectively. They don’t have the right to publish it as an official Senate resolution, or to make it law. If the government has the right to freedom of speech, how can we restrain them from suppressing everyone else’s?
This isn’t a right/left issue, and it isn’t a religious issue. This is a basic assault on our civil rights. Get angry, folks! Make some noise!

All I Really Want

2009-02-02T16:12:00.001-05:00

You know what I wanna do? I want to open a movie theater, but I only want to show classic movies. You can go anywhere to watch Slumdog Millionaire or whatever, and that’s fine. I am not in any way trying to put down modern films, but the classics are crying out to be shown the way they were originally intended.
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock belong in a theater, not on a 16-inch TV screen. I think it’s really too bad that we don’t get to watch the classics on the big screen anymore (well, those of us who live in little nothing towns don’t, anyway). I want to see To Have and Have Not on the big screen. People debate how much “chemistry” modern screen couples have, but nobody had chemistry like Bogart and Bacall. I bet they set a movie theater on fire. I want to watch Bride of Frankenstein on the big screen, with the great Karloff in his signature role and Ernest Thesiger as the greatest Mad Scientist ever. I want The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, because if you haven’t seen Leone’s magnificent vision on the big screen, you haven’t seen it at all. I want Night of the Living Dead, and The Road Warrior, and Shaft.
And I want it to be like the Cinema & Drafthouse back home, where you could order a pitcher of beer or a glass of scotch, and maybe some potato skins, and you could smoke while you watched the movie. If you can watch To Have and Have Not without needing a smoke, I don’t want to know you.
We’ll have classics every day: Sunset Boulevard, All Quiet on the Western Front, Out of the Past, ...and God Created Woman. We’ll have a matinee and an evening show, an hour or so apart. They’ll be two different movies, in case folks want to make a day of it, and in between we’ll show shorts from Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry, as God-that-ain’t clearly intended. Friday latenights would be our Trash Classics double feature, and Saturday latenights would be our classic horror double feature. And every Sunday there would be a brunch/matinee with real food (as opposed to bar food) and light comedy, mostly Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers, maybe the occasional Carole Lombard or W.C. Fields for variety.
Of course, to do this, I would have to be fairly wealthy, because there’s a good chance that the business would never turn a profit, so I’d have to be able to absorb the loss year after year. And that means that I’ll never get to do it, ‘cause I’ll never be wealthy. But still, that’s what I want. Isn’t my reach supposed to exceed my grasp?

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

2009-01-18T16:15:00.000-05:00

Every news report I read or listen to talks about the “war” in Gaza. I have a semantic complaint here, which is that this is not a war.
“War” is when two groups of people fight and kill each other. In Gaza, what’s happening is that a bunch of people have been crammed into a tiny strip of land, defenseless. They’ve been surrounded by a 25-foot-high wall so they can’t escape. And now a much more numerous and powerful group of people outside the wall has started killing them indiscriminately. Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Minister threatens a “shoah” against the Palestinians. “Shoah” is the Hebrew for “holocaust,” a word I don’t imagine the Israelis use lightly.
There are a lot of ugly words for what’s happening right now in Gaza. “Murder” is one. “Extermination” is another. “War,” though, that one doesn’t fit.

Ghost Story

2009-01-04T00:54:00.000-05:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was kinda drizzling. Sure was dark, though.
I had been out at Mama’s and was driving home down the river road. It was quiet and deserted, no streetlights nor other cars, nothing but my highbeams and what little moonlight gets through the clouds, reflecting off the Ohio River. I wasn’t driving so fast as I usually do, ‘cause the roads were a bit slick, but regardless of conditions there’s a limit to how slow I’m gonna drive through there, alone on the road with Rosie and Social Distortion’s “When the Angels Sing”:

love and death don't mean a thing
'til the angels sing

Suddenly, coming ‘round a big turn just before the railroad tracks, a spectre appeared before me. It took the shape of a man bundled up tight in dark clothes, riding on a motorbike of some kind. The bike had no headlights, no reflectors, and was traveling right down the middle of the road. Brights and all, I didn’t see him ‘til we were thirty or forty feet apart, and even then it was more an impression of movement rather than me really seeing anything. I braked and swerved over to the right far as I could without going swimming, and the apparition passed within a few feet. Didn’t even glance at me as he went by, like he was in a different world, and when I looked in my mirror he was invisible again.
I’ve never heard any legends about the Ghost Biker of Route Two, but I’m gonna look into it, see if there’s maybe some sort of tragic history there that I don’t know about. I’m paranoid when I drive, seeing threats everywhere, and I don’t believe anyone could get that close to me without me seeing him unless he sprang from under the cold ground or materialized from the wet, heavy air. I don’t know how it could be possible.
I do know this, though: if he wasn’t a ghost when I saw him tonight, he’s gonna be one soon.

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

2008-12-06T15:24:00.003-05:00

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!!!

2008-11-14T14:23:00.000-05:00

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!

2008-11-04T06:33:00.000-05:00

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...

2008-11-01T14:04:00.000-04:00

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

2008-10-30T18:39:00.001-04:00

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

2008-10-15T11:41:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-24T00:04:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-13T14:49:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-05T14:50:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-17T15:39:00.002-04:00

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)

2008-08-10T14:54:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-06T07:58:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-07-30T07:30:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-07-24T16:07:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-07-23T11:16:00.001-04:00

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.

2008-07-10T10:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-06-25T15:12:00.001-04:00

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

2008-06-11T15:19:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-04T12:21:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-05-29T11:33:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-20T16:10:00.000-04:00

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

2008-05-13T20:20:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-08T20:50:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-11T20:59:00.000-04:00

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

2008-04-07T21:02:00.000-04:00

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

2008-02-22T14:15:00.001-05:00

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?

Octopus

2007-12-04T14:34:00.000-05:00

It’s a freezing cold day, and I’ve survived the walk across campus and have reached the cafeteria in the Student Center. I’ve just gotten a big-ass thing of hot soup and am attempting to place the lid on it while turning towards the drink machine, where I can get some sweet tea. My attention is completely focused on the hot soup, as you would expect, and I don’t see the young woman approaching rapidly on my right flank. I’ve got my headphones in, and so I don’t hear her footsteps, either. She, for her part, is trying valiantly to stuff loose sheets of paper into the inadequate folder inside the front cover on her notebook without dropping her plate; probably she is planning to study while she eats. In any case, she is sparing no attention for where she’s going.
She reaches me just as I return to a fully upright position, and just as her notebook brushes against my shoulder I become aware of her. She still hasn’t seen me, and I’ve got practically no time to avoid her. Most men in this situation would simply stop and let her run into them, or fall frantically back in an effort to avoid the collision. However, I’m me, and I like for everything to involve grand, flamboyant gestures. As far as I’m concerned, the camera is always on, you know?
I continue the upward motion of standing so that I’m on tiptoe and raise my arms high above my head. I make a big show of dancing from one foot to the next, swing my hips around, shift my shoulders. I slither next to, past, and behind her, and the motion startles her; she finally notices me, and stumbles in an effort to pull up short. I slip completely around her and do a full turn, but we both keep our balance. Although our clothes brush against each other all the way ‘round, our personal gravity never meets, and I don’t spill any of the soup. It is a grand, goofy, graceful, impromptu pirouette. Afterwards, when my momentum has carried me safely clear of her, I (the consummate dancer and perfect avatar of cool) nod to my partner, bow to the audience, and still none of the soup spills.
She smiles at me, bemused and intrigued, and I smile back. She speaks. I shake my head, so she repeats herself. I realize that my headphones are still on. I shrug my left shoulder up and knock the phones clear of that ear. “Sorry,” I say.
“No, really, it was my fault.”
“No, I meant, sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”
“Oh. Well, no, but I was just apologizing for running into you.”
“You didn’t,” I say, and gesture grandly as I continue, “Fortunately, I am light as the air, and graceful as the mighty…" for some reason I can't think of a graceful animal, "...I don’t know, the mighty…octopus…or something.”
She laughs and then smiles again, still bemusedly, as though I’m something entirely outside of her experience. She is lovely: red hair, fair skin, wide lips, long fingers. She is dressed down, a student preparing for exams: sweatshirt, sweater, worn-out jeans and ancient sneakers. She usually wears glasses, but is not wearing them now, and her eyes are merry and kind. She looks me up and down, and she thinks I’m interesting. She wants to get to know me better. “You’re puzzling,” she says, and her voice implies that she would like to solve me.
I’m on a break from work, just here to grab food that I’ll go back and eat in my office. I wish I could invite her to lunch with me. Instead I say, “Well, I’m really not so much of a puzzle, once you get to know me. Like how, if you stare at the two faces long enough, you see the vase between them, and then, you know, mystery solved.”
She nods, and when I make a move to walk to the drinks she turns, and we fall into step together. I’m thinking what a good “How We Met” story this will make for our grandchildren someday, and am already choosing the words and picturing their little faces in my head. She gets a fruit juice, and while I’m pouring my tea she asks me what I’m listening to. I had forgotten the iPod was even on, frankly. It’s on Shuffle, but I recognize the piece that’s playing. “Ravel, at the moment,” I answer, and begin trying to put a lid on the teacup.
“Oh, do you like Ravel?”
“Yes, very much.”
She is surprised and pleased. I hope that she is a pianist or violinist, a musician of some kind. She steps a bit closer as I continue wrestling with the lid. One edge has folded under and it won't go on. Why is it fighting me when I'm trying to be at my coolest?
“I love him, too,” she says, “he's on of my favorites, in fact. I like it that you’re listening to him.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I say, and perhaps my voice betrays some frustration with the lid as I continue, “I was hoping someone would validate my tastes for me.”
She reacts to this, starts abruptly. It hadn’t occurred to me before I'd said it that this statement could be taken as sarcastic, arrogant, and bitchy; I didn’t mean it that way, certainly, but that’s how she’s perceived it. Her bright, friendly eyes cloud over; she has the look I get when someone sits down next to me at the bar and tries to talk to me while I’m reading, the look that says, “I must get out of this conversation, politely if possible, but in any case immediately.”
The coolness is gone and I am suddenly flustered. My tongue stumbles around my lips. I want to apologize, but before I can speak, she has said, “Well, it was nice meeting you” in a voice like a knife slipping between ribs and is walking away. I stand stunned for a moment. Should I follow? Try to explain and make it up to her? Bewildered, I hesitate too long and am lost; she’s gone. One non-functional plastic drink lid has ruined wondrously limitless possibilities. And it's on a line that thin that all fate depends, isn't it?
I’ll see her again, though. She’s gotta eat. I’ll do better next time. No more being stupid. Promise.

Epic

2007-10-24T23:50:00.000-04:00

I like Husson’s, but some things about it aggravate me. Little things, mostly: we buy these cheap trash bags that can’t be pulled out of the cans without breaking; the owner frequently pulls silly rules out of his hat, and we have to pretend to take them seriously while he’s around; there is insufficient parking during the day, so close to campus; we don’t accept checks. This one bothers me specially, because I don’t understand it. I don’t see that check fraud is any easier to perpetrate (or more difficult to prosecute) than credit card fraud, and anyway it makes the customers mad. Things that make the customers mad adversely affect my tips, and so I am opposed to those things.

Lately I've been bothered, too, by being there too much. We were already a man short and then Jeff quit and Travis got fired (which was about the stupidest thing the boss could have done) and now Aretz is leaving, too, and Kenny, the general manager. I’ve worked both places (Husson's and the library) six of the last seven days, and eight of the last ten, and I’m tired. But not as tired as I was when I woke up at 8:00 this morning.

I worked at the pizza place before coming to the library today, and we got three delivery orders before the place even opened. One was a “walker,” a destination so close by that we don’t bother to drive it, in this case a worker in the university purchasing office wanting a couple of sammiches. One was for a new cultural oddity downtown: a gangsta-run incense and scented candle shop (?!?!?!). The fella who runs the place, and who ordered the pizza, was so gangsta’ed up that his speech was impossible to understand, especially over the phone, and so I was given not only the wrong name for his business, but also the wrong street address, by the person who took the order. That was fun.

The third order was for the St. James building, a big order, what we call the “Family Feast.” Large pizza, breadsticks, salad, dessert, drinks, the works. I got the ticket for that one and headed down there, and spent some small time trying to find a place to park. It is always troublesome when someone orders for one of the downtown offices during business hours, but I managed eventually by grabbing a handicapped spot (yes, I felt bad, and also, shut up) and leaving my hazard lights on.

Once that was accomplished I checked the ticket to find out where within the building I was going, and discovered that there was no room/suite number listed, only the address of the building itself. The street address, of course, was superfluous; it isn’t as though I couldn’t have found the St. James. For them as ain’t been to Huntington, the building takes up half a city block and is 12 stories high in a four-story town. You really can’t miss it. If you were a bird flying randomly through town looking for a window to swoop into and break your neck, odds are that the window you'd end up with would be in the St. James.

But no suite number, and as I walked into the lobby the only information I had was that the person who was to receive the food was named Milton. I called the number listed on the ticket and let it ring thirty times or so, but there was no answer. I thought, “What am I supposed to do, wander every floor of this building shouting ‘Milton! Pizza for Milton!’” I pictured myself as a modern-day Diogenes, endlessly searching the hallways for a hungry secretary.

A security guy saw me wondering and helpless and offered his assistance. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a directory of the building that lists the names of everyone who works/lives there, and the name “Milton” wasn’t familiar to him. He tried the number on the ticket, though, and when he dialed it his cell phone told him that it belonged to the law firm on the fifth floor. I thanked him very much for his help and went up in the elevator.

I walked into the office and told the receptionist, “I have a pizza here for someone named Milton.”

She looked confused. “There’s no one here named Milton,” she said.

The swelling sense of relief quickly deflated. “I’m sorry, but there must be. The phone number of your office is on the ticket.”

“Honey,” she said, “I’ve worked here as long as the firm’s been here, and I don’t know anyone named Milton.” She sat and thought for a moment. Then she picked up the phone and dialed. “Judy? Hey, it’s [whatever her name was]. Is your last name Milton, by any chance? It is? Well, there’s a young man here with a pizza for you. Okay, I’ll send him down.” She hung up the phone. “I’m sorry, honey, I knew her, I just didn’t know her last name. I thought you meant a man whose first name was Milton. She’s downstairs on 4, in the collections department.”

I thanked her, also, for her help, and left. Now, I was on the fifth floor and the person I needed to see was on the fourth. Obviously, I’m not so lazy and decrepit that I can’t manage a single flight of stairs, so rather than wait for the elevator I decided to walk down. Well, it turns out that the St. James is one of those silly buildings where the doors leading into the stairwell are fine, but the doors leading out are all locked. Once I walked into the stairwell I was trapped.

So I had to walk back down to the street, across the lobby, wave a sheepish hello to the security guy (while giving the international “don’t even ask” sign), and get back on the elevator.

I finally made it to the fourth floor, only to discover upon searching that there was no collection department there. But after some careful consideration (during which there was also a fair amount of self-recrimination for not having asked the receptionist upstairs what the suite number of the “collection department” was), I decided that prob’ly “Accounts Management” was a friendlier-sounding euphemism for “collection department,” and tried that door. Success!

The lady was very nice as I explained why it had taken so long to get her pizza to her. She apologized for not having given the suite number when she called, and for not answering the phone when I called, ‘cause the ringer didn’t work (wouldn’t you think that a law firm could afford to fix something like that?).

I handed over the pizza, and assured her that it was no problem. Which wasn’t true, it had been an ENORMOUS freakin’ problem, but I was just glad it was over. Then she got out her purse and handed me a check.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

2007-09-27T15:11:00.000-04:00

I was walking. It had been a hot day, but the evening was cool, and I was shivering. I had a canteen full of cheap wine, and I sipped it for warmth. I had walked far enough that the lights of the city no longer obscured the stars, and they were company. I remembered all the nights with my father, him pointing out constellations and the names of the stars, and wished I had paid more attention. "You," I decided, pointing at a star at random, "can be Sirius, because you're very bright. And you," I picked out five stars that were arranged in a vague W, "you ladies will be Cassiopeia. Just for tonight."

I was removing myself from everyone, but I was not isolating myself. I was absorbing the night, riding the tide of the universe around me, and trying to figure out if that's maybe Mars on the horizon. I could have come home and gotten my star charts, but I had already walked so far. Anyway, the things I didn't know weren't bothering me. It was the things I did know that were trouble.

A not-so-much needed ego boost

2007-09-10T02:26:00.001-04:00

Had an interesting experience. I was out on a delivery. I started, of course, heading down 4th Avenue from 16th Street. But it's important to avoid lights and there are MANY on 4th, plus which sometimes you turn right onto a street instead of crossing it because of oncoming traffic.
So I went into my serpentine routine on my way to the 600 block of 9th Avenue. I hung a left up on 14th Street, across 5th to 6th Avenue, where I turned right. I went a block on 6th before turning left onto 13th Street (only just barely making the light), and then right again on 7th Avenue, then left onto 10th Street for the viaduct. Coming out of the viaduct the light on 8th Avenue was red, so I turned right and then left up 8th Street, and was just about to turn right onto 9th Avenue when I saw flashing lights in my mirror. “Now what in the hell,” I thought, “could they possibly want?”
I pulled into a parking lot and the cops pulled in crosswise behind me, blocking me in. They walked up to me and saw the pizza sitting next to me on the seat. “Oh, that explains it,” they said. They had first noticed me because I sorta cruised through a stop sign or two. Didn't run them, exactly, just kinda didn't come to a full-and-complete stop, 'cause there was no one coming. Plus I was driving maybe just a little bit fast. So they followed me, and then when I started weaving through town, they though maybe something was up. In the words of one of the cops, “We thought you were taking evasive action, trying to lose us,” they said.
“Trust me,” I thought but wisely didn't say, “if I'm trying to escape from you, I'll be driving a lot crazier than that.”
Anyway, they radioed my ID in just to make sure I had no outstanding warrants, and then they let me go without a ticket. But the point of the story is the strange and wonderful thing they said to me before they pulled away. They said, “If you'd had a light on your truck telling us that you were a pizza man, we wouldn't have pulled you over for that.”
See, this confirms something that I'd kind of suspected, which is that regular traffic laws, within reason, don't apply to the pizza man. It makes sense because cops order pizzas too, and they like it when the pizza gets there fast and hot just as much as you do. So it appears that, as far as the cops are concerned, there's a separate set of traffic laws for us, which appeals to me, and also makes me want a lighted sign for my roof.
Courtney thinks that I have the biggest ego of anyone she knows. I disagree; I just think that I have a very healthy self-image, and part of that self-image is the belief that I'm the perfect avatar of cool, and am completely capable of figuring out my own rules for being a productive member of society (in so far as I'm interested in being a productive member of society, which frankly ain't that far). I think that I should be trusted to use my own judgment.
Anyway, I'm sure that, upon hearing this story, Courtney is thinking to herself, “Oh great, just what he needs: support for his belief that the rules that apply to other people shouldn't apply to him.” And really, I'm guessing that some others among you who know me are thinking more or less the same thing.
Well, it isn't so much that I think they shouldn't apply to me. I think most of them shouldn't apply to anyone at all. The overwhelming majority of rules I'm aware of are painfully stupid and need to be eliminated, and this includes virtually all traffic laws. I have a sticker on my truck that reads “The more corrupt the society, the more numerous the laws,” and I absolutely believe that's true. Our governments, both federal and local, have become more and more convinced that they have the right to tell us what we aren't allowed to do, and how to do the things we are allowed to do.
So, I don't think the rules should apply to me, dear reader, but I also don't think they should apply to you. However, in spite of the empathy I try to have with you good people, I only have to experience being myself. Given that, it seems to me that the rules not applying to me is a good place to start. I'm satisfied with that for now.

Everyday Heroes

2007-09-03T23:12:00.000-04:00

There's been strange goings-on in this little town of late.

I was out on a delivery, and came up out of the 10th Street viaduct towards the corner of 9th Avenue. Ahead of me, a car was sitting, burning, in the middle of the street. Not, like, overheating, or burning oil, but actually on fire. Not wishing to pass too close to a burning car (which, after all, is full of substances that are likely to go BOOOOM), I ducked into the Family Dollar lot and prepared to turn onto 9th.

Just then the light at the intersection changed, and the burning car started moving. I hadn't realized there was someone in it; I couldn't see well enough through all the smoke. But yes, there was, and the mad motherfucker was still driving it. Me, I would have abandoned the silly thing. I watched him out of sight, shaking my head and saying, “Whoa...dude's hard-core.” 'Cause, really, what else can you say? Folks think they're tough 'cause they get tattoos and body piercings, but to hell with that. Buckle up and lemme set you on fire; we'll see how tough you are.

A fella came into the store today and placed an order, but then asked to have his pizza delivered. He had no phone, he explained, so he couldn't call it in. We assumed that he was having the pizza delivered to his kids or something, and paying for it while he was away. That happens sometimes. Didn't matter to us; we'd gotten our money. So we made it, and I drove it to the address he'd given.

The address is actually right here on my block, just around the corner from my apartment, but it's an abandoned building. At least I've always assumed it was abandoned; the ground-floor windows are all boarded up and there are “No Trespassing” signs everywhere, and as far as I can tell the power's shut off to it.

I didn't see how he could possibly live here, and I checked the address twice before going in...4** Fourteenth Street, #4. I considered calling the store to make sure there hadn't been a mistake on the ticket, but my curiosity was piqued. Who doesn't love exploring?

Bemused, I entered and found an extremely steep and evil-looking staircase in my path. I followed it up to a door with a big 4 drawn carefully on in magic marker. I had to knock several times, but the door finally opened, and there was the guy who had placed the order, the guy who had been in the store thirty minutes earlier. I guess he had wanted pizza but hadn't wanted to carry it home on a hot day, so he'd coughed up a couple of extra bucks to have me bring it for him.

I was curious about the apartment, of course. What sort of crackhouse is he setting up, forty yards from my own apartment? He didn't open the door very wide, but I could see past him into the place, and actually he'd done it up pretty nice. It was furnished, and although it appeared that I'd been right about the absence of electricity there were lots of windows, so the place was airy and well-lit. I could see a sofa and coffee table, and in the small section of kitchen visible to me there was a nice, old-fashioned table, and the counters sparkled. It looked very comfortable and neat, inexpensive but really quite homey. I was impressed.

As he took the pizza, breadsticks, and soda from me, a very lovely young woman walked into my view. She saw me and smiled. She was slender, black, and probably about twenty. And let me explain what I mean by lovely. She was not pretty, like girl-next-door pretty, but beautiful, like she belonged on the cover of a magazine, except that no magazine could possibly be classy enough for her, and no photographer talented enough to do her justice.

I looked from her to the old man and tried to judge: Daughter? Granddaughter, even? May-December romance, possibly? I returned the smile, shyly and awkwardly, and she passed out of my view into the kitchen in search of plates.

He gave me a small tip and asked me to lock the downstairs door when I left, which I did, thinking to myself, “Living in an abandoned building is only a half-step up from homelessness, but in this case, that's a serious goddamned half-step.” I haven't walked a mile in his shoes or anything, but that seems like a nice little world he's made, basically from nothing.

I'm fascinated by these two guys. The first guy, the guy driving the burning car, you've got to admire his courage, if not his intelligence. And the second guy, carving a comfortable existence out of the wreckage of the city, you've got love his resourcefulness. Everyday heroes, I'm calling 'em, and I like this town a lot more than usual today.

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

2007-07-19T00:36:00.000-04:00

SCENE: It's the middle of the night. A man and woman are sitting on a low brick porch with an iron railing, in cheap folding chairs. HE holds a 32-oz. cup full of whiskey and water, and he chain-smokes. SHE holds a can of beer, and there’s a cat asleep among the empty cans under her chair. It’s a hot night but there’s a misting rain that cools them and makes everything shine, even in the low light. Both are slightly drunk and laughing.

SHE: We’re going to Hell.

HE: ‘Sno such place.

SHE: No. But, pretend. Just to keep the conversation going.

HE: Okay. There’s a Hell. (drinks) Just the one?

SHE: As many as you like.

HE: Really?

SHE: Sure. How many do you expect to need?

HE: Ummm…fourteen.

SHE: Okay. Fourteen hells, then. And we’re going.

HE: Now?

SHE: Eventually.

HE: To which?

SHE: All of them. We’ll split ‘em. Fourteen hells…that’s seven apiece.

HE: Wait, we aren’t gonna share hells? ‘Cause, love, if I can’t hang around with you, I’m not going.

SHE: Well, you can come visit, I guess.

HE: Okay. We’ll build a subway connecting them all, like the boroughs in New York.

SHE: Won’t that be expensive?

HE: I don’t know from infrastructure. And anyway, will there even be money in Hell?

SHE: Well, it’s the root of all evil. I had just assumed, I guess…

HE: Maybe I’ll hitchhike, then.

SHE: Good for you. Though I’m guessing that in Hell, you have to be careful who you take a ride from. If Ted Bundy pulls up in his little blue Bug…

HE: Not a problem. Serial killers lose a lot of their mystique if you’re already dead.

SHE: I suppose that’s true.

HE: I’m gonna taunt ‘em. I’m gonna walk up to Jack the Ripper and just point and giggle. Their eternal punishment will be me making fun of them. It’ll be a blast.

SHE: Looking forward to it, are you?

HE: Hell? Oh, sure. I mean, who wants to go to Heaven? Singing hymns and praising God and all that, sounds kinda boring to me. And it’s forever, remember. A little bit of boring is gonna go an awful long way. Hell seems like it would suit us better.

SHE: You know, you’re right. The things we’re going to Hell for, those are the things we enjoy, right? So maybe in Hell we'll be surrounded by the things we love. We'll bring our taste for illicit substances and lewd entertainment with us...

HE: ...we'll have a few drinks, smoke a little pot, get in the odd barfight, fool around a bit...

SHE: ...an eternity of sex, drugs, and John Waters movies, huh?

HE: It'll be divine.

SHE: So to speak.

Dancing with the Moon

2007-07-04T12:04:00.000-04:00

Months are getting shorter. This is happening so slowly that you can’t really tell unless you use very precise measurements and careful observation, but it IS happening. Back when folks first started to look at the sky and try to keep track of the rate at which things happened, months were approximately 40 days long. Now, as I expect everyone knows, they’re about 28 days long.

The reason for this is the gravitational effect that our blue planet and its moon have on each other. The tides she creates on our surface are very gradually slowing down our rate of rotation. And the pull we exert on her is speeding up her orbit.

To which you’re saying, “So what? I didn’t come to the blog today for an astronomy lesson.” Well, okay, but keep listening.

You know how the moon always shows the same face to us? Her rotation has synchronized itself so that she always faces the center of her orbit. It turns out that that’s natural; any two objects in orbit around each other will eventually do that. They start off like they’re next to each other in a mosh pit, swinging around each other and spinning crazily and looking every-which-way, but little by little they come together and start doing a waltz, locked in an embrace, gazing into each other’s eyes. That waltz, and not the slam dance, is the natural order of things, the result towards which our mutual orbit is drawing us.

So someday, about 20,000 years from now, we will reach a point beyond which we will always show the same face to her, just as she does to us now. Which means that she will, from that moment on forever, hang always over the same spot on the Earth.

And what I’m thinking is this: I want to find out what spot that’s going to be. And then, when I know, I’m gonna move there. And if I happen not to live for 20,000 more years (‘cause, you know, accidents happen), then when I die, that’s where my remains are gonna be stored. Wherever she’s gonna be, I wanna be there, too.

Quest

2007-06-20T19:49:00.002-04:00

I am driving. I’m on a quest. I need a new tea pan, and it’s gotta cost less than $3.39, which is all the money I’ve got in the world until the bank processes my paycheck, an activity for which they have no apparent skill or enthusiasm.

I’ve been to the grocery. They sell pie tins and cookie sheets, but no pans. I’ve been to the dollar store. They sell coffee makers and tea pots, but no pans. Now I’m driving West, heading for a store I know nothing about, on the advice of my mother, who is wise in the way of such things.

I’m getting more and more absent-minded as I get older. I will put on water to boil for tea. It takes only a couple of minutes, I shouldn’t even wander off, really, but a watched pot never boils and so a-wanderin' I go. I have a smoke on the porch and soak up the sun. I sit on the couch and put on a movie. I check my e-mail, or a story comes to me and I begin to write. Next thing I know, it’s an hour later and there are bad smells and ominous crackling noises coming from the kitchen.

I make at least two pitchers of tea per day, and sometimes as many as four. It’s the only caffeine and sugar I get in my diet. A functioning tea pan is a necessity. So I’m broke, but I’m out looking for a tea pan. As noted, there aren’t that many places downtown that sell pots and pans, but I finally reach the Odd Lots or Big Lots or what-the-fuck-ever it is out on 14th Street West.

It’s hard to get into the lot, actually. Evidently Congress has declared today “National Rednecks Idling in Beat-Up Cars on the Side of the Road Day.” They are everywhere, just sitting there, and they are blocking at least two entrances. But I finally manage it on account of my vast skills and perseverance.

They have appropriate pans, in sets of three, for six dollars. Too much for me, but as I cast about the store I discover that someone has already broken up a set. I grab one, and after much discussion and sidelong, accusing glances, the cashier lets me have it for two bucks and tax. $2.12. I give her exact change and have money left over for a fruit juice at work tomorrow. I am triumphant.

I arrive home to discover that a local garage band is committing a violent crime of a quasi-musical nature in my little alley. But I’ve got a soft spot for garage bands, and their sloppy exuberance suits the ambience of 4½ Alley, and it’s okay. I walk into my apartment, put on Lucinda Williams’ Essence, and get out the sugar. The new pan is so beautiful that I am hesitant to use it. I feel like I should hang it on the wall above my bed and keep it shiny and clean and lovely forever. I show it off to Amy instead, and she pretends she's interested for my sake:

Isn't it beautiful?

Yes, it's very beautiful.

How beautiful?

Ohh...just really very beautiful. Very beautiful indeed.

It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, isn't it?

Umm...okay. She is doubtful, but at my crestfallen look, she reconsiders. Well, yeah, I guess. She nods her head decisively. It sure is.

Oh, thank you, sweetheart, and I smile a big goofy smile, and she smiles back tolerantly.

I put the water on to boil. The urge to write this story is tugging at me, but I do not leave the stove. I hover over it, and Lucinda and I sing of sofa covers and books ‘bout being saved, tables no one eats on and pianos no one plays, and think that it sure would be silly not to use my pretty little brand-new two-pint saucepan.

I don’t take my eyes off of it. And you know what? It boils anyway. And the tea is sooooo good.

On Sleeping with Ernest Thesiger

2007-06-18T09:55:00.001-04:00

“The air itself is filled with monsters,” she says. I wince and shake myself. My knees and neck are locked in place; I crack them open patiently and painfully, and moan, and stretch, and the warm stillness of the room is filled with voices.

“We must have a long talk, and then I have an important call to make.” His voice is smooth and shiny and rich in malice. It is ichorous and venomous. It has ugly secrets.

I swim up into the light and shake a smoke out of the pack. I am dry and sore, and he is pouring a drink. “Do you like gin? It is my only weakness,” he says.

I exhale and scratch my head. I rub my eyes against the sun and cough. I need some sleep, I think. “Work, finish, then sleep,” he says, and waves his hand, and the motion is somehow both menacing and dismissive.

I reach for my drink, and he raises his glass. “To a new world of gods and monsters,” he exults, and I swallow.

I Don't Like Mondays

2007-05-11T15:48:00.001-04:00

I just had a smoke break. I went and sat in the shade (it’s wonderful that I must now sit in the shade, instead of huddling in the sun trying not to freeze to death) and read and listened to my Walkman, which is set on random, because that’s the only way to fly. I was reading a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories. In one of them, a non-fiction piece I’d never read before called “Strange Memories of Death,” I came across this passage:

Going down to the newspaper vending machine, I buy today’s Los Angeles Times. A girl who shot up a schoolyard of children “because she didn’t like Mondays” is pleading guilty. She will soon get probation. She took a gun and shot schoolchildren because, in effect, she had nothing else to do. Well, today is Monday; she is in court on a Monday, the day she hates. Is there no limit to madness?

The girl’s name, if anyone’s interested, was Brenda Ann Spencer, and Dick was wrong about her probation: she is still in prison. The incident took place in January of 1979 at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, and afterwards Spencer really did say, when asked why she had done it, “I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day...I had no reason for it, it was just a lot of fun.”

Spencer shot 11 people, two of whom died. This means, of course, that she’s been far surpassed in the 28 years since, at Jonesboro and Columbine and a few weeks ago at Blacksburg. I suppose progress has many possible definitions.

Anyway, I know all this about Spencer, not because I religiously follow news of school shootings, but because Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats was moved by the incident to write a song called “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which hit #1 in the UK in 1979 (people just love a good tragedy, especially if it’s served up in great sloppy dollops with a good soundtrack attached). It’s an excellent song, and a few years ago Tori Amos covered it on her album Strange Little Girls

The silicon chip inside her head

gets switched to overload

And nobody's gonna go to school today,

she's going to make them stay at home.

Daddy doesn't understand it,

he always said she was as good as gold

And he can see no reason

‘cause there are no reasons

what reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays.

I want to shoot the whole day down.

And the thing is this: as I sat in the shade and read Dick's words about Spencer and her trial, the song that my Walkman randomly chose to play was Tori Amos’ version of “I Don’t Like Mondays.” I am absolutely fascinated by weird little coincidences like this.

Sunshine and Stink

2007-05-07T20:52:00.000-04:00

Good God, it was sunny today. Even with my sunglasses on, the light just about burned my eyes outta my head. It was hard to read on my smoke breaks ‘cause of the light reflecting off the pages…I wish publishers would convert to a nice off-white paper.

It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t had enough sleep; the semester is over, and until summer school starts I have to work mornings instead of evenings. I’m a night person, and nothing can make me fall asleep early, even if I have to wake up at 9:00. That’s always a difficult adjustment to make.

Bright is bright and pain is pain, but thirsty is thirsty and I braved the sun for a fruit juice, same as always. They had a table set up outside the student center, collecting money for a local shelter for battered women. They said nothing to me as I passed, which is just as well, really. That’s a good cause, but I only had one dollar for the fruit juice machine, and really it never occurred to me to give it to them. I went and got my Peach Papaya.

As I left one of them did call out to me, “Hey, would you like to help battered women?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I had only the one dollar, and I already turned it into fruit juice,” and I waved the bottle at him to demonstrate. He looked disappointed; I guess they hadn’t had much luck. I sympathized, and felt maybe a little guilty. Then I had a happy thought and said, “Here, you can have the fruit juice, if you like.” He was not impressed. In fact, he looked kinda pissy. So, in case you were wondering, battered women don’t need yer damned fruit juice, thanks.

I walked back across Buskirk Field towards my library. About halfway across I was struck by a strange smell. It was a disinfectant smell, but not only that, as if the smell of whatever they were trying to disinfect lingered persistently through the cleaning, like it was a stronger thing. And it was really overwhelming, and I was thinking, “How the hell can the smell be that strong, out here in the open, in the middle of a field?”

I caught sight of the Science Building, looming over the field. I wondered if the smell was coming from there. “Maybe some experiment has gone horribly wrong. Maybe,” I thought, “the whole building is filling up with this noxious gas. Maybe the whole Science Department is already dead, and now the gas is coming after the rest of us.”

Then I thought, “Maybe the gas is flammable. Maybe it’s just waiting for a spark to set it off, and then the whole building will go up. Maybe even the whole campus!” I sniffed the air, and looked down at my cigarette. “Eh,” I said, “it’s worth the risk.” I shrugged, took a drag, and kept walking.

When I talk I gesture a lot, especially if I’m excited, or tired, or drunk. I do it even when I’m talking to myself. It’s how I work things out. Bonnie used to say that I thought with my hands. We’d be sitting in the kitchen, each doing our own thing, paying no attention to each other but each drawing comfort from the other’s presence. Maybe she’d be doing her homework or reading the paper. Maybe I'd be doing a crossword puzzle, or writing a song, or maybe just thinking. And my hands would start to dance. I’d play with my hair, wiggle my fingers, drum complicated rhythms on my skull with my fingertips, point at imaginary objects, draw lines and circles in the air. I would gradually get that feeling of being watched, and I’d look up and she’d be grinning at me indulgently.

“What?” I’d say. “What?”

“You’re thinking with your hands again,” she’d say.

As I walked across Buskirk Field, wondering about the smell and whether I was about to blow up the entire campus, I was making broad, sweeping gestures with my arms, plotting the trajectory of shrapnel and brick and the bodies of researchers. I was raising my arms high above my head, imagining a fireball reaching to the heavens. I was running my finger along the outline of the Science Building, noting each exit that any survivors might make for. And then I saw, on the edge of the field, a guy standing and watching me, and grinning like Bonnie used to. He was in my path back to the library, and as I passed him I leaned in and said, by way of explanation, “Smells bad.”

He took a step back and looked affronted. He had misunderstood me. “Did you just say I smell bad?” he asked.

I looked at him, bemused, then tilted my head back and shut my eyes against the sun, and inhaled grandly. “Even if you did, brother,” I reassured him, “with all this ugliness in the air, how would anyone notice?”

Pop and the Chinese Food Odyssey

2007-04-04T16:13:00.000-04:00

I’m about 16, I guess. Mama is off visiting some relative or another, and my sister Debby has gone with her, so the men have the house to themselves. It’s me, Pop, my brother Teddy, and Ricky Flowers, my best friend, who lives with us. Although the absence of the womenfolk entices us with the possibility of hanging around the house watching sports in our underwear, farting and wiping boogers on the sofa, we decide instead to celebrate the complete maleness of the occasion with some Chinese food, and pile into the long-suffering family car.
It’s an extremely beat-up Oldsmobile. It is painted a yellow so faded by the years that it’s really become more of an off-white, and has a brown vinyl top. The passenger-side door was torn off by my mother in a collision between the car and the concrete post protecting a gas pump at the 7-11 up the street. My father has cleverly fixed the door back in place with wire coat hangers, but of course it no longer opens. We enter the car through the window, like on The Dukes of Hazzard, and as always we shout “Yee Haw!!!” as we climb in. I love this memory.
Teddy rides up front with Pop, and Ricky and I are in the back seat. Pop starts the car with his trusty screwdriver; the key went missing a year ago. On the day it disappeared Debby was running down the street and ran face-first into a piece of lumber sticking out of the back of a truck. She injured her eye, not very seriously but it bled, and her panicked screams were heard several blocks away. In desperation Pop tore out the ignition and started the car with a screwdriver, and drove her to the hospital. Later the key turned up, but by then the ignition had been destroyed and the key was useless. Ignitions are expensive and the money never seemed to be around, so the screwdriver stayed.
After a couple of false starts the engine catches and we’re off. It’s a heavy summer evening in Richmond, overcast and we’re praying for the rain to come ‘cause it’s 100 degrees and the car has no air conditioner. But thoughts of Chinese food are comforting, and we take back streets towards our favorite place, out in the East End, so that there’s a constant breeze from the windows.
The radio is on as we drive, and the news is full of another day of Oliver North’s testimony over the Iran-Contra scandal. Pop is conflicted over this story. On the one hand he is appalled at the activities North engaged in, and wants the men responsible punished. But on the other hand, he can’t help but respect North’s courage, in his refusal to name names, to “rat on his friends.”
As the reports unfold he becomes more and more agitated, yelling at the reporter on the radio, and finally snaps it off. But this does not end the discussion. Ostensibly, I suppose, he’s talking to us, since we’re right there in the car with him, but really he’s having the argument with himself. He’s Hamlet. He’s reciting his own soliloquy, and we’re just in the audience.
“Umm…Pop…” Teddy says after a while, “isn't that the way to the Chinese place?” He points plaintively down the road we've just crossed.
When there's no answer, I reach up and grab his shoulder, and repeat the question. He looks at me for a second as if trying to remember who I am. Then, realizing where we are, he tries to play it off. "This is a shortcut," he says, and his attitude is the same as that of my cat when she pretends she meant to fall off the television.
After a few moments he turns on an unfamiliar road, but we're at least heading in the right direction now. But he just keeps talking and driving, and soon we’re someplace none of us boys have ever seen before. We’ve driven so far East that we’re no longer in the city at all, or even in Henrico County.
As if waking from a dream, Pop shakes his head and looks around him, then makes a couple of quick turns, as if nothing was wrong, and pulls into the parking lot of an abandoned drive-in theater to turn around and head back west.
He pauses for a moment before returning to the road. “You boys hungry?” he asks.
“Well, of course we're hungry. Listening to you arguing with yourself is hungry work.”
He denies that he was arguing with himself, says that he was discussing the important news of the day with his sons.
“Don’t discussions generally,” I ask, “involve one person saying something, and then a comepletely different person saying something?”
He laughs and admits that he was excessively caught up in the evening's civics lesson. But at least now we’re on the right track, he assures us. He knows exactly where we are, and Chin-Yung, the restaurant we're going to, is only a few miles away. We’ll be there soon.
He pulls back onto the road, but the nowhere we're in doesn't seem to change much as the miles pass. It’s dark now. My brother was already asleep when we turned around. Ricky and I are awake and aggravated, but the whispered passing of trees on the dark road, the warm air from the open window, the gentle swaying of the car on the backroads and the accompanying rhythmic rattling of the broken door, are hypnotic, and soon we’re nodding off, too, to the sound of the argument having started afresh.
We’re awakened by the sound of the driver’s side door slamming. We look up and find ourselves outside our apartment, and that it's been almost two hours since we left home.
Pop is walking towards the front door. I climb over Teddy and out the window, “Hey, hang on! Chinese Food? Weren’t we getting Chinese food?”
He stops and looks back at me in some confusion. “You know,” he says after a moment, “I believe we were.” He walks back toward the car, but stops and checks his watch. “It’s too late for Chinese now, anyway” he says.
“But, but…Chinese food,” I say, pleading. “Chinese food?”
“Don’t worry,” he says, “we’ll order a pizza.”

Being God

2007-03-28T17:14:00.000-04:00

Well, brothers and sisters, this is something new to me: my very first Live Journal voice post. I’ve been delaying this, ‘cause I wasn’t sure what I should talk about. Many topics have been suggested to me, and while I appreciate all the input I do feel that my first voice post should be somehow special…personal, you know?

So, I’ve been looking for something important and serious, something poignant to talk about tonight, something that will change the lives of all who hear it. And I think I’ve found it in a momentous decision I’ve made recently: I have decided, brothers and sisters, that I should be God.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, here’s another bleeding heart, gonna complain about all the injustice in the world.” Well, now, hold on, I’m not here to do that. Not that there isn’t injustice in the world…I mean it’s everywhere; in the first place, smokin’ and drinkin’ could certainly be less injurious to my health. A just God would pay more attention to things like that.

It’s pretty clear just overall that whoever’s in charge here, while clearly very creative, lacks certain… administrative skills, shall we say? It’s prob’ly time for a new hand to be on the joystick, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

But I’m not at all sure that it should be my hand. My sense of injustice is perhaps a little too pronounced, a little over-sensitive. Also, I’m very temperamental, a quality which is little improved by my personal habits. I might, in a fit of pique, strike everyone with an Ohio driver’s license blind, for example. Not that that would affect their driving much.

I can well imagine myself, sitting and watching C-SPAN over a glass of whiskey, deciding, “Well, that’s gonna be just about enough outta YOU, Tom DeLay…a curse upon your house unto the fifth generation!” At which point the entire DeLay family would be struck by a curious, hitherto unknown malady which would cause their right arms to shrivel and atrophy, finally falling off like dried-up umbilical cords; and from the place where each arm had been would spring a great, scaly, foul-smelling reptilian wing.

A God of Justice should probably have a lighter touch than that. It would be poetic justice, maybe, but not actual justice.

Still, it would be aesthetically pleasing, and that’s where my real talent lies. I don’t want to make macro changes. I don’t want power over life and death and the weather and continental drift. I am NOT the sort of man with whom that much power and responsibility could be trusted. But I could make micro-changes that would just improve the experience of living for everyone in small, simple ways.

Take hummingbirds, for example. They are very lovely and impressive little creatures with their super-duper-hi-fi metabolism and ability to float in midair. I love hummingbirds. But when the cold weather comes, they migrate south. I’m sure the tropical folks love them during winter, but you know what? Those of us in the cold parts of the world need them more. Folks in the tropics have the sun for company, but we need all the happiness and beauty we can get.

I think that hummingbirds should hibernate instead of migrate. I think they should create nice warm little cocoons for themselves. And because a hummingbird’s diet is mostly sugar, these cocoons would take the form of little bulbs that would look like they were made of spun glass, like Christmas ornaments with beautiful colorful birds inside, and they would hang from tree branches all winter long, catching the light and sparkling like precious stones in the forest.
The cocoons, which would be transparent to start with, would function like greenhouses to preserve warmth through the cold months. As winter passed, though, each cocoon would gradually fill with the hummingbird’s waste, but again, this would take the form of little sugar crystals that would line his feathers and gradually fog the glass and make the cocoon even more colorful, like a prismatic snowglobe; and you could tell how much of the winter was left by how opaque the cocoons had become.
And then in spring, when the bird was ready to awaken, the cocoon would burst in a puff of sweet, iridescent, multi-hued powder, and its resident would fly off to continue the business of whatever a hummingbird’s business is.
Think how much more beautiful winter would be if that was the case, and ask yourself whether I shouldn’t be Deputy God in Charge of Beautification Projects. I mean, it’s a big beautiful world out there already, and I have very few complaints, but I could touch up the corners a bit, maybe. I could airbrush away a few of the rough edges.
There’s a job out there needs doin’, and I’m the man to do it. I’m starting tonight, brothers and sisters. Forward any requests or ideas to this address, and love to all.

* * * * * * *

This is the transcript of my first-ever Live Journal voice post. It was originally published in October, just as the weather started to get cold.

Death of the Bar Culture Blog

2007-03-09T14:45:00.000-05:00

This blog has now ceased to have an independent existence. I write so much over at Live Journal now that there isn't time to keep this one up, too, which you'll notice if you check the frequency of posts to this site since last spring. And anyway, my LJ has lots of readers, whereas this blog has become readerless (mostly a reaction to my inconsistent publishing schedule, I hope...or maybe it just isn't any fucking good).
So, I'm converting this one. I'm gonna use it as a repository for my favorite essays and stories, copied from LJ to here. In other words, it isn't really Ogre's Guide to Bar Culture anymore. I haven't decided yet whether I'm gonna leave all the old posts on here, or transfer them to LJ and leave only my favorites. I think it's pretty likely. When I do decide that, I'll leave another message.
From now on at least, though, this will be only my very favorite writings.

Why People Need God

2007-02-17T22:11:00.000-05:00

My sister’s daughter, Olivia, was born a couple of weeks ago. She was very sick when she was born; she stopped breathing twice in the first few hours. They kept her in the hospital for a week, during which my sister didn’t sleep and just hung around outside the infant ICU until the doctors finally declared Olivia ready to go home. She’s there now, doing well, and it looks like everything’s alright.
My friend's son, Max, was born at the beginning of the week. He, too, was very sick, just like Olivia, and had to stay in the hospital. Unlike Olivia, though, he died last night. This is too awful for words.
What was the difference between Max and Olivia? Why did the one live and the other die? What whim of fate decided this, and what possible purpose is served by it? I’m sorry, I have so many questions, but none that aren’t clichés.
I’m outraged by this, but there’s no one to yell at. I hate it when something is nobody’s fault. I like to have someone to be angry at. If it was your fault, dear reader, I would have someone to blame. But whose ass do I kick for this? What name do I put on my shitlist? Whose head do I break the bottle over?
This is why people believe in God, isn’t it? It's so that, when something tragic happens, they have someone to blame. They can rage helplessly and vengefully at the sky and believe that someone is listening, that there's someone responsible that they can hurt.

(cough)

2007-01-26T13:11:00.000-05:00

I walk out of the Student Center, light a cigarette, and start to walk across campus. It’s bitter cold and I’m wearing my heavy winter coat, made heavier now by full pockets; I have just bought myself a bottle of fruit juice and one of those containers of sliced fruit that you pick up for a couple of bucks in the cafeteria.
As I walk, I consider the various fruit products in my pocket. “This stuff is very good for us,” I say to myself. “We’re being very health-conscious today.” I think happy thoughts about nutrition all the way back to my own building. I could have gotten pizza and a soda, but I went with pineapple and strawberries and canteloupe.
“Very healthy indeed,” I tell myself as I put out my cigarette. I lean my face back to the sun, which has broken out of the clouds just for this moment in the midst of an ugly grey winter’s day.
“Yes,” my self answers back, “if we keep this up, we just might live forever.” I cough and go back to work.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

2006-09-19T01:05:00.000-04:00

I’m thinking tonight about my friend Sonny from high school. I don’t remember most of the people I went to high school with, but Sonny isn’t the sort of person you forget.

He was, even at that tender age, just completely fried. He had smoked so much pot that his mind was on a kind of permanent bake. Even when he wasn’t stoned, he seemed stoned.

For example…we’d be sitting around on Monday morning discussing a party we had all been to on Saturday night. Sonny would sit and grin, and occasionally he’d add things like, “Oh, that must’ve been cool,” or “Sounds like a great party, man…wish I’d been there.”

And finally, we’d have to tell him, “Sonny, baby, you were there.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I bet it was a blast,” he’d say.

I used to hang out over at his house, and we’d get wasted and have these deep philosophical discussions (well, they seemed like deep philosophical discussions at the time). One day we proved, logically and conclusively, that the Earth was flat. We even plotted all the arguments that round-Earthers might try to use against us and came up with unassailable responses. It was all watertight and undeniable. We were very clever boys, you see.

I wish I had written all of that stuff down.

I’m trying to picture him as he would be today. I see him living in a shack along the river, a little west of town. Probably he built the shack with his own hands; he worked as a carpenter in VoTech, and he was always clever about things like that anyway. I bet he does random work for people, building furniture, repairing gutters, to pay his meager bills, and spends the rest of his time on books and music and pretty girls sunning themselves on the banks of the James. I see herb gardens in his windows, a small vegetable garden out in front, and a bit of marijuana growing discreetly out back. I see him with a big stupid friendly dog whose color is impossible to guess, ‘cause he’s always covered with mud from the river. I see Sonny sitting on the front porch in a Pink Floyd T-shirt, taking a toke and playing his guitar and diggin’ the sunset over the city, like we always did back then. I don’t know if that’s what his life is like now, but that’s how I picture it. It would suit him.

Anyway, Sonny had this strange habit all through high school of constantly predicting the end of the world. Now, this was during the waning days of the Cold War, so it was at least possible; and Reagan was President and we were pretty sure that he’d push the button in a fit of cognitive dissonance sooner or later anyways. So the end of the world was something we all thought about, kind of casually. We weren’t worried about it…we were living each day as if it were our last, anyway, so the apocalypse wouldn't have mattered much.

Sonny worried, though. Well, I don’t know if it would be correct to say that he worried...on the contrary, he was very serene about it. I’d ask him if he wanted to come over and watch the basketball game and he’d say, very evenly and calmly, “Well, since the world’s gonna end this evening, I don’t think it much matters where we decide to watch the game.”

He was wrong over and over for years, but his faith was never shaken. He would always predict universal destruction very simply and in a very matter-of-fact way, with tremendous conviction.

“Hey, Sonny, there’s a warehouse party" [they were not yet called “raves”] "down on Leigh Street this weekend. You wanna come?”

“Maybe. But it looks like the world’s gonna end tonight, so I’m not making any plans.”

And it was all a big joke to the rest of us. I mean, the first couple of times it could be maybe a bit unsettling (especially if he did it while we were all wasted), but once you got used to it, it was fun. It was just a Sonny thing, you know? And conventional wisdom in our circle said that it didn’t pay to spend too much effort trying to figure Sonny out. He was like a Rubik’s Cube, and you liked him better with his colors jumbled.

In fact, he really became a sort of rallying cry. “Drink, screw, and be merry, for Sonny says that tomorrow we die!” Sorta like that.

So one night, after a couple of years of this, Sonny and I were sitting around his house. I was drinking cheap wine (Sonny liked having me over ‘cause I didn’t smoke up all his pot); he was taking endless bong hits and sipping on his mom’s beer. And I asked him about some event coming up and, as usual, he said that he’d be happy to attend in the unlikely event that anyone was left alive by then.

“Sonny, dude, I gotta ask you this. Why are you always so sure the world’s about to end?”

“It is gonna end. It’s gotta happen sometime.”

“Yeah, but why now? I mean, every day you say we’re all gonna die tonight, and you’re always wrong.”

“But if I keep saying it, sooner or later I’ll be right.”

“What the hell good will it do you to be right after being wrong all those times?”

“Hell, I’m wrong all the time anyways. We all are. Almost everything I’ve ever done or believed in or thought has been wrong. Prob’ly all of it was wrong; I’m not sure. I might never have been right about anything, ever, in my whole life. The things I think I’m right about, those are just the things I haven’t found out how wrong I am about yet.

“But someday the world is really and truly gonna end. And when that happens, it’s gonna be an incontrovertible fact. There ain't gonna be no mistaking it, there ain't gonna be two ways of looking at it, it's gonna be the real true end. And I’m gonna know, right then, absolutely and without any doubt, that I was right about one thing.”

“Okay," I said, "but I still don’t see what good it’ll do you. You’ll be dead. And everybody else’ll be dead, too. What difference will being right make?”

“Sure, we’ll all be dead. But you know what? Everybody else in the world, their last thought is gonna be ‘Oh, shit!’ But me, my last thought…well, it’s prob’ly gonna be ‘Oh, shit!’ too, but mixed in with that will be a lot of satisfaction. For once in my life I will KNOW that I was right.”

That’s pretty silly, really, even though his rationale is similar to that advanced to bolster belief in most major religions. I laughed at him at the time, and I laugh at the story now. It was just Sonny; it was typical of him, really. It was a simple idea taken to fantastic extremes.

But strangely enough I find that, as I get older, I really kinda treasure the memory of that conversation. I’ve come to realize what Sonny somehow had already figured out when we were 16: that we don’t really know anything, that we can’t believe anything, that nothing is absolutely true. It would be a great comfort to me to know for sure, just once, that I was right about anything important.

I’m not gonna go as far as he did. I don’t think the world is gonna end tonight. I’m pretty sure it’s not, in fact; and if it does, I’ll be as surprised as you are. I’ll be out running wild in the streets, maddened by the horror of it, just like everybody else.

Except Sonny. I don't think he'll be scared. And I know he won't be surprised. Wherever he is, he’s gonna sit and stare at the coming apocalypse, and have one more hit, and smile.

Jeannie Confuses Me With God

2006-09-13T02:58:00.000-04:00

There is a cat who has, for her own reasons, decided to share my apartment with me. We’ve been together for about three years now. I call her Jeannie, because I have to call her something, but that makes no difference to her whatsoever. She is an extremely difficult and dangerous example of her species, a startling blend of fear and ferocity.

Tonight, she is being even more difficult and dangerous than usual. Since I got home, she’s been charging me every few minutes and trying to remove the flesh from my legs. Usually when she does this it’s because she’s hungry; she’ll bite and/or scratch me, then run into the kitchen and, standing over her food bowl, she’ll look at me and mew piteously. But it isn’t time for her to eat yet, and anyway, she doesn’t seem to be hungry. Instead of running to her bowl, she’s been running to the front door.

It’s a cool, rainy night here in Huntington, very comfortable and still, and I have the door standing open. Because of this, it can’t be that she wants me to let her out; she can go out any time she wants. It’s been a mystery to me, and quite a painful mystery at that, trying to discover what she wants so badly. But I think I’ve figured it out. I think she wants me to turn the rain off for her.

I suppose that, to her, I appear to move in mysterious ways. After all, I can make it light or dark. I can make it hot or cold. I conjure her food, as far as she can tell, out of thin air (not that the air in here is ever thin, given how much I smoke). I can even turn the rain on and off inside the apartment (in the bathroom, anyway), so why wouldn’t I be able to turn it on and off outside?

So she’s sitting, hunched in the doorway, looking out at the lot and longing to go play, and occasionally looking at me over her shoulder, saying, “Can’t you do something about this? I’ve got important business out there!”

No, sweetheart, that’s another item on the long list of things I can’t fix. It's very sweet and cute that she thinks I can, but it's a little bit sad, too, because there actually isn't anything I can do. I don't need metaphors for powerlessness in my life right now; I've got plenty of the real thing.

“But there’s things need killin’ out there! I’m on a tight schedule! I’ve got a quota to meet! Come on, just turn it off for a little bit? PLEEEEEEASE?”

There’s no way to explain this to a cat, is there?

Ed Wood, a Man for My Season

2006-08-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

Huntington is, for reasons that have not yet made themselves clear to me, a town in which many, many people drive on the sidewalks. This can sometimes make me, as a career pedestrian, a little bit uncomfortable.
But I'm adjusting to it. I can tell I'm adjusting to it because last night we went out walking and got a little bit worn out, so we just stretched out together on the pavement at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twelfth Street, across from the Union and whatever ridiculous name Mango's is currently trying to be known by.
Someone called the cops on us, and the cop that showed up was the brother of my best friend. He screeched to a stop just below our feet and called to me out of his window: "Hey, Rick!"
I sat up. "Oh, hey, Adam, what's up?"
"What are you doing? Are you guys okay?"
"Oh, yeah. We've been walking and we're relaxing a little bit."
"Okay. We got a call that someone had passed out on this corner."
"No, just hanging out. We haven't even been drinking."
"Well, alright, then. I'll see you later."
"Sure thing, brother. Love to your sister, okay?"
This was late in the evening, around eleven or so. Earlier in the day I'd worked. Well, "worked" isn't right. I'd been at work, but I didn't actually get much done yesterday. It was one of those days where nothing goes right, a reverse-Midas situation and everything you touch turns to dross. So I gave up on accomplishing anything at around noon and just wandered aimlessly through the stacks, dancing to music on my headphones and thinking dark, moody thoughts and hoping no one would see me and notice that I was doing a whole lotta fuck-all.
After work I went home briefly, and then to the Union to see Katy, who was working. I had a glass of rum, which was lovely and settled me down a bit. And Herbie's anniversary party was last night. He opened the Union (his second bar) exactly fifteen years, one month, and three days ago last night. I'm not sure why the anniversary party was last night, actually, instead of on the anniversary. But there was free food :) so I don't care that much.
I called Amy to tell her about the free food, and she came down. Afterwards we went for the walk that took us on a circuit from the Union to campus, up to Third Avenue, down to what used to be the Plaza, and back around to 4th and 12th, where we sacked out.
We were there, I don't know, an hour or thereabouts. I lay on my back and sang a little bit, and listened to her talk, and made suggestions for future stories, and stared at the changing traffic lights. And in the silences, I thought quite a bit.
I'd watched the first bit of Tim Burton's Ed Wood before coming out. I'd never seen the movie before, but I know quite a bit about Wood, widely regarded as the worst director in Hollywood history. In fact, I've made a bit of a study of him: he's one of my heroes, actually, and the movie had nothing new to teach me about him.
He is very different from my other heroes. Eugene Debs, for example, was an eloquent and driven leader of men, an important figure in the political history of this country who managed to receive more than a million votes for the Presidency two times, once while in prison for opposing US involvement in WWI. He was one of the major reasons that the US labor movement won the victories it did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories the fruits of which we are all still enjoying (at least until the current Congress is done destroying them all). He faced down strikebreakers, the captains of industry, and the United States government, and he overcame them by sheer will and personal magnetism and determination.
Debs, or "Gene" as I call him, was a titan of the left, a man whose life affected (and continues to affect) those of millions of his countrymen. Wood, needless to say, is not like that. I doubt seriously that anyone's life has ever been significantly altered by seeing one of his pathetic movies.
Actually, most heroic people are considered heroic because they overcame obstacles and accomplished something, demonstrated in the face of doubt and derision that they had the skills or the talent or the willpower to reach their goals. Which, that's fine, but most of us aren't like that, you know? Most of us will never be world-class good at anything at all, and a few of us will never find anything at all that we'll even be acceptably good at.
Wood was one of those people. His lack of skill is appalling. He was a terrible director, and no force on Earth, no sudden insight, no intervention by a more talented and experienced mentor, no gift from God even, could have made him a good director. Sure, his movies were low-budget, but they'd have been even worse with decent backing. He's the guy that a low budget actually helped, because it meant he couldn't afford to put but so much stupid bullshit into his films. He was profoundly, atrociously, phenomenally, openly and dramatically awful.
And you know what? He didn't care. Making movies was what he loved doing, and he was convinced that he could do the job better than anyone else. He made an awful movie, and then without a pause he dove into the next movie, which would turn out to be even worse. And by the time that one, too, bombed, he'd be hard at work at the next one.
He directed 18 films (more than Kubrick) and was involved in some capacity in nearly a hundred. And it's gotta be said: they all sucked. Every goddamned one of them. Do you know why it's so easy to choose Wood as the worst director in Hollywood history? Because no other bad director left such a body of work. No one else with his lack of skill could have continued in the business for so long. Anyone else would have given up and gone off to be a car salesman.
The point is this: ANY idiot with talent, skill, vision, and determination can face and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles; but it takes a special kind of idiot to overcome obstacles without any of those qualities. That is far more rare and precious.
Ed Wood, every day of his life, was confronted with the incontrovertible fact that his dreams could never be realized. Not the opinion of naysayers, not the machinations of competitors, but obvious, cold, hard, fact.
He just refused to believe it.
Ed Wood, the patron saint of mindless optimism and a bull-headed refusal to face the facts.
It was mostly him I was thinking of, lying on the pavement next to Amy, who was within arm's reach but very distant, and really I might as well not have been with her at all. And after she left I, rather than reconstructing a thoroughly unsatisfying evening in my head, went home and watched the movie all the way through, and then all the special features, and then the movie again, and drank sangria, and then slept very soundly. And now, today, I'm back where I started, refusing to acknowledge all the evidence which overwhelmingly points to the fact that I'm trying to claw through a brick wall and will never make it.
Ordinary heroes are of no use to me in this situation, and don't you tell me about yours 'cause I don't wanna hear it. You can keep your Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. and Margaret Mead and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ed Wood, he's the man for me.

Help! I've been kidnapped!

2006-07-09T19:47:00.000-04:00

So, I went to see Amy and was showing off my new camera. I noticed that, for some reason, the picture was clearer when I pointed the camera at the floor than when I, for example, pointed it at her. I said, "Well, I could take a beautiful picture of my feet."

She said I should do that, then, so I did:

I showed her the picture, and she said, "With your legs crossed and those loose pants, it looks like you've been kidnapped and your kidnappers have restrained you by wrapping you in a tartan rug, and you've somehow gotten one hand free and are sending this picture to your rescuers as a clue to your whereabouts."

And see, no one else in the world would've thought of that, which is one of many reasons I love her so much. She's just wired delightfully differently from everyone else.

Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar

2006-07-06T15:13:00.000-04:00

The trip to Marlinton is over, and I'm back here where I...well, not where I belong, if I’m gonna be straightforward about it, but where I pay rent, anyways.

It's amazing how quickly you're back when you come home from a trip. You think you're gonna get your feet wet, maybe wade into the kiddie pool a little ways before you start relearning how to swim, and then someone comes along and shoves you right into the deep end.

I didn't even have a chance to put on my swimming trunks first.

So, before I get too awful caught up in all the Huntingtonivity, Huntingtonness, Huntingtonicity, whatever you'd say there...before I get too caught up in all that and forget the wonderful time I had this weekend, I'm gonna make a list of things to remember from the Marlinton trip:

Walking into the radio station in time to hear Cheryl say, “No, you can’t have that one, ‘cause Jesus is using it as a ceiling fan.” This is the reverse of what happened with Reed last week…a punchline that stands on its own. I don’t even care what the joke was.
Chicken fried steak, giant mounds of hash browns, toast, sweet tea, and all the gravy in the whole world at French’s Diner, not once but twice (and the second time with an egg as well…just like heaven).
Not getting tetanus from the old railbridge, even though my Dooleys were sure I would.
A four-word MySpace message that hasn’t been out of my thoughts for a second since Saturday night.
Taking notes during the school board meeting. I was gonna write a big post on here about how the adult members of the school board are plotting against the Student Representative, who was not present at the meeting even though her name was on the agenda. There’s something going on there. They are trying to strip her of her power, is what it is. That post, obviously, never happened, but it was fun to think about.
Also, the lovely irony of passing notes back and forth with Mrs. P at a school board meeting. It was like being in high school English class again.
The Lewisburg apartment of Clan Dooley, which reminded me of home so much that it made me a little bit dizzy…I kept expecting to look out the window and see Church Hill or the Lee Bridge. Also, Ma Dooley saying that I looked “like wisdom beauty and gentleness personified.” I can never receive enough compliments.
Continually NOT clipping my fingernails.
The balcony, and the view that became so familiar so quickly, and poor hard-working long-suffering Cerberus, and Mrs. P thinking she needed to explain to me why the candle, when used as an ashtray, smelled so nice.
My impromptu live album, recorded in the shower.
Sarah furiously updating her Vocab from Hell because Mrs. P and I couldn’t stop saying stupid things.
Live In Your Mom, Play In Ours. Your mom—Australian for Beer. Because So Much Is Riding On Your Mom. Happiness Is Your-Mom-Shaped. Melts In Your Mom, Not In Your Hands.
Remedy sleeping on my feet.
Marilyn’s speech while trying to organize a party that no one else seemed to know was going on, and my raffle ticket.
Translating what my Dooleys were saying into French in my head and mumbling it into my pillow, half-asleep on Monday morning.
Five books for a dollar in the bookstore, and a beautiful purple sweater for $1.50 at the thrift store, and drops of Jupiter to bring home to Amy.
Riding a beat-up old bike out to the telescope. I’m gonna try only to remember the downhill bits, though.
A punk rock show at the Opera House (which, I’m gonna leave that alone) and an old woman who scared all the punk rock kids enough that they called the police.

And most fondly, I'll remember these:

Discussing buckwheat pancakes with Mrs. P. I don’t like pancakes, but it didn’t make much difference in the context of the conversation.
Difficulty with the high beams on the way up. The fearlessness of Mrs. P on country roads. Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell. Trading songs and stories with Sarah all the way home (the first person to hear me sing one of my own songs since probably 1998), pulling over to let the storm pass us, and fireworks from the highway.

Taking the Day

2006-06-29T16:04:00.000-04:00

The Fourth is coming up, which, I know that's not news to any of you. I work for the state, so I'm off that day. It's a Tuesday. I'm off Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. Monday, I'm supposed to be here.

I want to go to visit Mrs. P. A two-day break isn't long enough for that. So, I'm not working on Monday. I'm taking the day.

I like that expression, "taking the day." Americans say they're taking the day OFF, but to the British, it's "taking the day." It makes more sense. Deleting that one word makes a huge difference in what we're saying.

The American version sounds a little bit guilty, like you're getting away with something. You're supposed to be working, but you're not. It's like we think we're skipping school.

But the British, whose expressions are nearly always more elegant or wittier than their American equivalents, they get it right. I'm taking the day. My various jobs have stolen all these days from me, thousands of precious and limited days over the course of my life, and now I'm stealing this one back. It's mine, goddamnit, one of a limited number allotted to me, and I'm gonna do what I want with it.

I wanna get out of town. I want my Mrs. P. I wanna hang out and travel with Sarah. I wanna be off alone in the wilderness with Clan Dooley and with all the interesting people I've heard so much about.

To the state of West Virginia: get off me, you sons of bitches.

I'm taking the day.

The Story of My Life

2006-06-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

There's a T-shirt I love which shows a guy, just a face in the crowd, suddenly looking at all the near-identical people around him and thinking, "Hey, what if I'm not the main character?"

When I was younger I definitely considered myself the main character in the story of my life (and back then there was some evidence to support the theory). These days I really don't. I mean, if I was gonna make a movie of my life, nobody as ugly as me could star in it. Actually, I'm hoping to get Chow Yun-Fat for the role.

No, I don't really want to be the main actor anymore, I don't think. I'm better behind the scenes. I think I want to direct my life rather than star in it. And God knows this life needs a new director. Whoever's running the show right now has no skill for the dramatic.

So, okay. The first thing I'm gonna do is fire the screenwriter. I mean, the original idea was pretty good, and he's got a knack for snappy dialog, but the plot is beginning to drag a little bit. So much could be done with this story; certainly a few of the characters are very well-drawn and interesting. But it needs a little spicing up. For one thing, it could certainly use a steamy sex scene or two. And we're gonna need a complete rewrite in Act Three...I mean, this ending needs work. Who wrote this garbage? You know, people are getting tired of movies that don't have happy endings. How's this: boy and girl go to Italy and take up raising goats on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean? And have three perfect little girls named Xenia Voltaire, Circe Rousseau, and Virginia Mercy? And live simply and happily ever after? Everybody loves a movie like that.

Today's scene sucked ass beginning to end, writing, shooting, scenes and performances. The star was hungover and sick at heart, much of the dialog was turgid and excessively emotional, and at least one of the costars has gone completely off the script. Let's snap this up a little, huh? That little bit of violence with the fruit juice machine looks pretty good in the rushes. Let's build on that. Tomorrow we'll start with a car chase. Those are a lot easier to write.

Also, the production designer had better start pulling his weight. This setting is getting pretty dull, the same sad sorry tiny little town for nearly five years. What happened to the old guy, the one who set scenes in California and New Orleans and DC and New York and Boston? What happened to those wonderful old sets like the Southern Belle, Third Street Diner, Madison Square Garden, the Village Cafe, and the Art Institute in San Francisco?

We'll need to work on continuity next. In too many of the main character's relationships, the nature of the relationship changes from one day to the next. It's too confusing for the audience, and seems to make it hard for the actor to learn his lines, as well...half the time he's up there on the screen and you can just tell he doesn't know WHAT'S going on around him. We can't have the movie changing so radically from scene to scene. Let's go back to the tried-and-true formula, "Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl digs other boy, other boy turns out to be unworthy, girl eventually comes back 'round to loving the hero." And for God's sake, let's try to be linear.

The casting director did a good job for a while but these days her choices are pretty lousy. We need to change all the actors who play co-workers, for example. They're nice enough folks, sure, but they should be doing commercials for the Kentucky Lottery. Bring in Sarah Polley, Peggy Lipton, and Jeremy Irons instead. Oooh...do you think Diana Rigg is free?

The prop man needs to get off his ass. The principal possessions of our hero are WAY too left-over-90's-slacker. I mean, they're so last decade. We're trying to make a hip, happening film here, and you can't do that with a twenty-year-old TV, a jukebox with blown-out speakers, and burned-out light fixtures in the john. That furniture is atrocious, and the kitchen is simply too small to be convincing. Can we get somebody in here to work on that, please?

I need to light a fire under the producer and get a bigger budget for this thing, too. $12,000 a year just isn't cutting it. How are we supposed to afford location shoots on that? We can't even get decent meals catered with that kinda money.

And somebody do a little research, alright? We need a little quality control here. I mean, a little while ago we're shooting a scene in early June and it's raining and forty degrees out! Somebody wanna get on his horse about fixing that?

For Christ's sake, I'm a hella director, but you can't expect me to do everything.

Lucid Dreaming

2006-06-25T16:30:00.000-04:00

Amy and I watched The Waking Life the other night. There's a bit in it where the main character is talking to another guy about lucid dreaming, the idea that, if you know you're in a dream, you can control it. I've been hearing this for years. I think it's bullshit. I'm gonna tell you why.

Probably a year and a half ago I had a dream. This is when I was still working at Hank's, and I'd walked home dead drunk at around five a.m. and collapsed into the bed. I fell asleep immediately and suddenly I was walking home down the alley again. I thought it was strange, having to walk home twice in one night. Then I noticed that, though the alley was a perfect representation of my alley, it was very slightly too small, like it was a movie set that had been constructed to 7/8 scale. It was very nicely done, down to the trash in the gutters and all the broken glass, but it was just too small. And there was a guy following me, and a guy waiting for me at the end of the alley, and a guy coming towards me across the bus station parking lot. I figured they were gonna try to mug me. I wasn't worried, 'cause the guys were in 7/8 scale too. Figured I could take 'em.

Anyway, what with the repitition and the scale, it suddenly occured to me that I was dreaming. So I stopped under a light and said, "Okay, then, punk bitches, come on and get your Matrix-style ass-whuppin'" and they disappeared. So I thought, "Hey, awesome, this must be one of those lucid dreams where you can control what happens. I can do any cool thing I can imagine. So, what to do?"

So I thought for a while, about flying into space or burrowing to the center of the Earth or going back in time to hang out with Ben Franklin or Audrey Hepburn, and then finally decided, "You know what I need, though, is a blowjob. I haven't had a blowjob in forever."

I wasn't exactly sure of the procedure for this. "Now, what am I supposed to do? Just concentrate on fellatio? Okay." So I closed my eyes and thought REALLY REALLY hard about a blowjob, and then I opened 'em back up, but there was still no one in the alley.

"Well, when I threatened the bad guys they vanished. Maybe it's an aural thing. HEY, WHOEVER'S OUT THERE...MAN IN NEED OF BLOWJOB," I tried again, no luck.

"Well, shit," said I. "I might as well just wake up, then." And I looked around, expecting all the buildings to melt and fade away and my room to appear, but that didn't happen either. "Okay, fine, so what do I do now?" I thought. I couldn't decide on anything, so I just went the hell on home.

So, either there's a piece of my brain missing (and after the ungentle way I've treated myself over the years, that wouldn't surprise me) or this lucid dreaming thing is pure bullshit. When I'm dreaming, I almost always know it, and yet I'm just struggling to keep my head outta the water.

Scene from a Waffle House, Sunday Dinner

2006-06-18T17:05:00.000-04:00

SCENE: Waffle House (THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH), int., early afternoon. An incredibly handsome young man (ME) sits with an older woman (MAMA) and two small boys (JOSH and JOE). The woman is having a conversation with the boys while the man sips his coffee, until someone says something that brings a Beatles’ song to his mind. He sings a verse of it, then turns to one of the boys…

ME: The Beatles are awesome. They’ve got a song for every situation.
JOSH: Do you like the Beatles?
ME: Everybody likes the Beatles.
JOSH: Not everybody likes the Beatles.
ME: Everybody who counts likes the Beatles.
JOSH: Everybody who counts?
ME: An appreciation of the Beatles is considered a baseline requirement for admission into polite society.
JOSH: I don’t like the Beatles.
ME: Then you won’t be allowed into polite society.
JOSH: ‘Cause I don’t like the Beatles?
ME: (thinking of all the other reasons the boy isn’t ready for polite society) Well, that’s what we’ll tell people, anyway.

The Litter Bug

2006-06-17T15:07:00.000-04:00

I don’t mean to scare ya, my friend, but I betcha
Come Father’s Day the litter bug’s gonna getcha
The urge is righteous, but the face is wrong
I hope that something better comes along

I want to have children.

Well, more accurately, I want someone else to have children, sired by me. Not a wife, don't want a wife, and who'd have me, anyway? Just a surrogate mother, is what I need, so I can have my children.

I don't necessarily want to KEEP them, you understand. Children are kinda nightmarish, really. I just want to name them.

I want to have three girls. No boys, please. I was a boy myself, and I know what an asshole I was. If my sons would be genetically programmed to be like me, then No Boys Allowed.

You know how your more hysterical conservatives worry about abortion on demand because they think that people will abort fetuses because they don't like the sex of the child? I'm the one that they got that idea from. "It's a boy? I'm making an appointment at the clinic."

Anyway, yes, three girls. And if they have the same last name as me (there are no guarantees), then their initials will be CRW, VMW, and (my favorite) XVW. They're gonna have hell finding monogrammed clothing.

One name is a nod to my Slavic heritage, a good solid Russian name, a very beautiful Russian name actually, which is Xenia. Not ZEE-nia, like those idiots in Ohio pronounce it, but ZEN-ya, which is the proper pronunciation. Also there will be a Circe, connecting one of the girls with the classical age. Their middle names will be in honor of the great French thinkers, Rousseau and Voltaire. Neither is a feminine name, but they're both lovely-sounding enough for my beautiful little girls. And anyway, I'm heavily into androgyny. So, Xenia Voltaire and Circe Rousseau.

The third little girl will be named for my home, Virginia, and we will call her Ginny, which folks will think is Jenny and they'll say "Thank God he gave ONE of his daughters a real little girl's name." Her middle name will be Mercy, which I've always thought was just a beautiful name for a girl, even though Ace appropriated it from me for one of his stories. Virginia Mercy. That just sounds so wonderful. And then, because they all would have such beautiful names, I would prob'ly end up falling in love with them and keeping them anyway.

So, all I need is a prospective mother with 27 months to kill, and then we can get on with our lives. Any takers?

Yeah, Eddie, But Is It Art?

2006-06-13T17:31:00.000-04:00

You know what I hate? Well, that's a lot to ask, really. Lemme rephrase that question. Do you know what item #17846 is on my hate inventory? It's semi-realism in movies. I don't object to realism. I'm not a huge fan of it, of course...after all, my favorite movies are zombie movies.
Realism, however, is okay. But incomplete, half-assed attempts at realism in the movies aggravate me. I hate it when, say, two ostensibly German characters are speaking to each other, and they speak English with a German accent. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Germany is really not full of Germans speaking English to each other in German accents. It's full of people speaking German to each other. That's why they call it that.
If you want realism in your movie, let your characters speak German with little English subtitles. And if realism isn't that important to you, just let 'em talk normally. You're not fooling us with these crappy accents, okay? We know they aren't really German, they are American actors pretending to be German, and that's okay.
Movie watching is about the willing suspension of disbelief. Forget the stupid accents. Just tell us they're German. We'll believe you. That's what we came to the movie for.
I'm gonna make a movie someday, and I'm gonna cast my friends in it, but I'm not gonna write particular parts for particular folks to suit their particular character traits or appearance. In fact, I'm gonna cast the movie by putting the names of my actors in a hat and drawing them at random. If we do that, then hopefully Mrs. P will be the 6'11" professional basketball player from Zambia. Stephen will be the beautiful woman that everybody's falling over themselves to get close to. Amy will be the fat girl with the great sense of humor that everybody loves and nobody wants to sleep with. My brother will be a six-legged Martian goatherd.
All of this without makeup; my brother, for example, will not have six legs, and Mrs. P won't have to stand on a ladder for the whole movie. I'll convince people of who my characters are through the use of clever dialog, stellar performances from my cast, and just repeating the big lies over and over. After twenty or twenty-five people make fun of my sweet little Amy for being fat, or walk up to Heather and say "How's the weather up there?" I think people will start to get with the suspension-of-disbelief program. It worked for the ancient Greeks; I'm gonna make it work for me.
On a not-entirely-related note: on payday, I have decided, I am going to Latta's and buying myself a new set of pastels. I miss doing my colorful little sketches. And what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna start doing pictures on every surface I can find, and I'm going to sketch the pictures of what you really see when you're wherever the picture is. For example, I'm going to sit at one of the big concrete tables outside the library and do a picture (on the table) of what you'd see if you were looking up, out over the campus, instead of down at the table. I'm gonna lacquer it when I'm done, too, so it will last forever (and not ruin people's clothes). And my picture is gonna look exactly like the campus on an early-summer afternoon, only better, 'cause it'll be brighter and more colorful and the folks in it will be more beautiful, and people will sit at the table and compare my lovely picture to the actual campus and think, "Jeez, I wish the real world was like that."

Scene from a Sidewalk Cafe, Tuesday Evening

2006-06-07T11:03:00.000-04:00

SCENE: Two young folks sit at a table outside a mom-and-pop coffee house, just before sundown. He’s sipping a China Black, and she’s drinking grape juice and eating dried fruit and cottage cheese. Their conversation turns from vaguely political and spiritual topics to the more practical matter of what they should do with the rest of the evening…

HE: Well, we could just go home and watch those Marx Brothers movies. They’re due back on Friday, so we need to watch them sometime soon.
SHE: Maybe. I don’t know, though…I don’t think I could really focus on a movie right now. Although, shit, I do want to see The Omen. Is that out yet?
HE: Yeah, it opened today. You didn’t think they were gonna miss this date, did you? I think the only reason they decided to remake the movie at all was so they could release it on 6/6/6.
SHE: I forgot that today was 6/6/6. The apocalypse is supposed to be tonight.
HE: Oh, right. (pause) Well, then, I guess we don’t have to worry about getting the Marx Brothers movies back on time. You wanna go to The Omen?
SHE: No. Not really. I guess we could just wander around…
HE: Yeah, we’re pretty good at that.

[a motorcycle roars past, obscuring her response. She gazes after it with loathing]

SHE: I want a Tommy gun.
HE: I’ll get you one for your birthday.
SHE: No, better not. If I had one, I’d use it.
HE: I’ll get you a paintball gun instead.
SHE: We don’t need a gun anyway. We could just stand along the sidewalk with, I don’t know, a crowbar or something, and when a motorcycle passed us we could jam the crowbar into the spokes.
HE: (grins) Oh, evil girl. (brightens) Hey, it’s 6/6/6!
SHE: I know. We were just talking about it.
HE: Right. We need to go out and do something evil in commemoration of the day.
SHE: Evil? Like sacrificing babies?
HE: Well, maybe not that evil. Just something fun. Something cheerfully, randomly, celebratorially evil.
SHE: What did you have in mind?
HE: I don’t…I don’t know, off the top of my head. Couldn’t we just walk around until evil came over us? You know, searching for inspiration? Just ‘til we ran across a kitten we could drown or something?
SHE: You know, now I’m not sure wandering around is such a good idea tonight. I’m not wearing good wandering shoes.
HE: Oh. Well, any ideas?
SHE: None.
HE: Our evil production has fallen well below quota recently. (lost in thought, gazing around) I’ve got it!
SHE: What?
HE: I’m gonna go over to that newspaper machine, and I’m only gonna put in 50 cents, but I’m gonna take TWO newspapers.
SHE: (with a tolerant smile) Oooh, that IS evil.
HE: In fact, I’m gonna take EVERY newspaper in the box! How’s that for evil, baby?
SHE: That’s about as evil as it gets.

[she rolls her eyes and shakes her head as he wanders off, stage right, only to return sheepishly a few seconds later, empty-handed]

HE: Damned thing’s empty.
SHE: Yeah, that kinda thing doesn’t work so well at 9:00. We should’ve done it first thing this morning, and hit every newspaper box in town, so that no one could have their paper.
HE: Well, next time, we’ll know.

[She speaks, but stops and stares with even more hatred than before as another, even louder, motorcycle passes]

HE: WHAT?!?!?
SHE: Automatic weapons!
HE: Noisy.
SHE: I’m serious. We need, I don’t know, submachine guns or something.
HE: Yes, but with silencers.
SHE: Oh, of course. They’re very loud.
HE: And we’ll go around very quietly killing noisy people. We’ll be the Noise Pollution Killin’ Bandits.
SHE: That sounds like a good name for a band.
HE: Yeah, and we’ll play on street corners, but if people throw change into our hat we’ll shoot ‘em, ‘cause the jingling makes us crazy.
SHE: And we’ll play electric guitars but they won’t be plugged into anything, ‘cause we hate the noise…and instead of singing, we’ll whisper the songs.
HE: And I’ll play my saxophone, only with socks stuffed down into the bell so it won’t make any sound.
SHE: I didn’t know you could play the saxophone.
HE: With socks down the bell, neither will anyone else.
SHE: And with the money we make from our music, we’ll buy automatic weapons and kill bikers.
HE: Now, THAT’S evil. There’s our next evil project.
SHE: No, it isn’t evil, really. I mean, they kinda deserve it, making all that noise. It’s justified.
HE: Retributive.
SHE: They asked for it.
HE: Performing a service really.
SHE: Plus, we can’t start that tonight, ‘cause we don’t have the guns yet. We need something evil for tonight.
HE: Let’s just get some cans of spray paint and exercise our artistic impulses while committing the evil act of vandalizing.
SHE: I don’t know. I think I want to break something.
HE: Well, we’re in a town full of glass.
SHE: True. (thinks for a moment) If you were in a riot, I mean if you were living in a city and there was rioting, would you be a vandal, or a looter?
HE: Hmmm….that’s a tough one. I’d probably be happy vandalizing, really. Looters get caught too easy, ‘cause they’ve got the evidence on them, right? Plus, I live in a fucking closet, and I don’t know where I could put the loot.
SHE: Yes, I suppose we don’t want to be too materialistic.
HE: Plus, I don’t really need anything. Except I need a toaster. I’d loot a toaster, and then I’d go about vandalizing, I think.
SHE: Yeah, you can’t just go out looting at random. You’ve gotta look for things you really need.
HE: Right. I’m looking forward to being in a riot with you. Everybody else will take to the streets, and we’ll be sitting on the balcony with a legal pad saying, “Okay, we’ve gotta hit K-Mart, ‘cause I need some new bath towels,” or...
SHE: …or “Don’t forget the drug store”…
HE: …or “Hey, better grab some smokes”…
SHE: …or “What do you think is the best route from Latta’s to the liquor store?”
HE: Oh, yes, better plan the route carefully. Gotta be careful which streets you go down during a riot.
SHE: We’d be very organized looters.
HE: That's right. We’d have our little grocery list…
SHE: Only it would be a looting list…
HE: And money would be no object. Maybe we should start compiling it now. ‘Cause, you know, when the riot actually starts, there may not be much time.
SHE: Well, that’s something to do with the evening, but I think that’s probably for later. What are we gonna do right now?
HE: It’s too bad you can’t loot the things you really want. You can’t, for example, loot a dinner from Waffle House…
SHE: Okay, stay with me. What are we doing tonight?
HE: You wanted to break something?
SHE: Yes yes yes!!! Maybe we should go throw bricks through the windows of really posh places. And have really stupid, subliterate obscene notes attached to them... like, "You Stink!!!"
HE: We could do that. Personally, though, I was hoping to set something on fire.
SHE: Hmmm...well, instead of bricks, we could throw Molotov Cocktails.
HE: I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Me, you, a lighter, and flammable liquid…
SHE: Right. I can see it now: you light the cocktail, and then stand there staring at it, “Ohh, it’s so pretty” and then it blows up in your hand.
HE: Yeah, that’s probably out, then. Plus, you can’t attach a note to a Molotov.
SHE: We could do burn-pattern designs in people’s front yards with gasoline.
HE: I’ve never had any luck with that. I always draw things really carefully but just end up with a big round patch of fire.
SHE: Oh. Well, something else, then.

[both sit thinking for a while]

SHE: We’re really pathetic.
HE: I’m still waiting for the apocalypse to start. Plans might well prove to be superfluous anyway.
SHE: I forgot about that. Maybe it isn’t the apocalypse, though. Maybe it’s the Rapture. I wonder when it’s going to begin?
HE: It might have already happened. Done and over. I mean, if every “True Christian” on Earth suddenly disappeared, you and I might not know about it for a few days.
SHE: I don’t know. We can’t seem to manage any evil; maybe that’s a bad sign. Maybe we’ve been saved without knowing it. Maybe we’ll have to go, too.
HE: Jeez. Think of something evil, quick!

[blinding flash, both disappear]

GOD: TOO LATE!!! (maniacal laughter)

CURTAIN.

Lighter Karma

2006-06-01T23:20:00.000-04:00

Been out walkin' in the rain. Only briefly, unfortunately, 'cause the rain gave up on me not long into the walk. But that's okay. It was fun while it lasted. Leaving my house required a tricky bit of navigation, actually, because both Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets flood when it rains this much this fast, and so of course Four-and-a-Half Alley transforms into a canal between these two great lakes. By the time I headed out, my apartment was an island in a sea of glistening glop. Now, I love splashing in puddles as much as the next guy, but I've seen what's on the ground in my little alley, and I don't want it floating past me in the dark. I waited 'til I got a little further away and found some slightly less-contaminated puddles to splash in.
I brought my favorite lighter with me. I call it the Magic Lighter, because it lights no matter what. I mean, it's a cheap-ass disposable lighter of indeterminate make and eccentric design, but it really is magical. It works when it's wet, it works when it's cold, it works in a car without rolling the windows up or in the wind when I've only got one hand free. I save it special to use in bad weather, 'cause it's the only lighter I can trust to stand up to the tempests the world occasionally throws at me.
But it's finally beginning to run out of fluid. I say "finally" because I've had it for over a year now. It's a really big lighter, you see (I mean BIG...I've never seen another one like it), and held a lot of fluid. It would, in fact, make a formidable weapon. I'm terribly depressed that it's dying on me, because I can't replace it. I can't just go to the store it originally came from and buy a new one, because it's stolen, and I have absolutely no idea where it was purchased.
Now, before you get thinkin' ill of me, I'm not really a thief. I mean, you could walk off and leave your wallet next to me on the bar and I'd chase you down and give it to you. But lighters...stealing lighters doesn't count as stealing. It just doesn't. I mean, in the first place, it's something most people do unconsciously. For a smoker, you light your smoke and then slip the lighter into your pocket in one motion. The pocketing of the lighter is part of the act of lighting the cigarette. Because of this, when I give someone a light, I usually light the cigarette for them rather than letting them actually handle it. It's a simple rule of self-smoking-preservation.
Also, I've come to subscribe to the Great Karma Lighter Wheel theory of lighter justice. See (an aside to the unitiated), there's this Great Karma Lighter Wheel that devolves lighters into and out of the possession of smokers (depending on diverse factors including merit, luck, and personal alcohol content), and this wheel has a Yin and a Yang. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors (or worse, unrelated concepts from two eastern religions that have nothing to do with each other), but try to come with me on this...
The Yin of the Great Karma Lighter Wheel: Anyone who fails to pay sufficient attention to prevent the theft of this object, which is probably the single most-stolen personal item in the long, dark story of humanity, does not deserve to have one anyway.
The Yang of the Great Karma Lighter Wheel: The person that you're stealing this lighter from came by it by virtue of its theft from ANOTHER person, and will steal it back from you at the first opportunity. In fact, this lighter probably belonged to you in a past life.
Because it's one of those bizarre facts of life that no one ever, in the history of the world, has actually bought a disposable lighter. I am completely at a loss, in fact, to explain how lighters get into the economy in the first place. I carry three or four lighters everywhere I go, just in case, and I've got probably fifty more in my house, and I can't remember ever taking money out of my pocket to buy one. The closest I come is that the little cigarette store I shop at, up at the corner of 20th Street and Fifth Avenue, gives away free lighters when you buy a carton of smokes. But that little place just can't, on their own, be responsible for every lighter on the market. Bill Gates himself couldn't have flooded the market with this many lighters.
I think the government's behind it. I think that the CIA decided to get everyone they could hooked on crack, and then they suddenly realized that in order to smoke crack you need a lighter, and so they hid a couple billion a year in lighter expenses in some HUD bill or something, and now they have secret lighter agents who surreptitiously leave lighters lying on bars, or slip them into the pockets of schoolchildren, all across America. No one but the government is capable of a conspiracy on this scale.
Anyway, yeah, I'm not gonna be lighter-less, 'cause my apartment's just plain lousy with lighters, but I am gonna miss this particular one. I'm glad the Great Karma Lighter Wheel dropped it on me, and let me keep it so long. Goodbye, old friend. I hope you've achieved Bic Nirvana at last.

Birthday Flowers

2006-05-12T12:22:00.000-04:00

Ah, hospitals.

I don’t much care for hospitals. I don’t suppose anyone does. I couldn’t say that I dislike them more than most folks, ‘cause I can’t read minds, but my dislike of them is pretty profound, if uninformed. I never get sick myself, you see; I have arthritis in my knees, and I occasionally get major hangovers, but outside of that I’m perfectly healthy and always have been.

What this means is that not only do I dislike hospitals, I also have a very limited experience of them, and don’t really understand how they operate. So, it was with some trepidation that, after I got off work last night, I walked down to St. Mary’s for visiting hours.

The last time I was in a hospital was when Rhonda, my former lover, had her surgery several years ago. The surgery lasted six hours, and I was a little bit frantic, constantly running out to smoke and then running back in and questioning staff members to make sure nothing had happened while I was outside.

When the surgery was done, some doctor or nurse or hospital employee of some kind came out and told me, “She’s fine, and we’re getting ready to move her up to room 819,” or whatever the room number was; I don’t remember. Anyway, he said I could go up and wait for her there. So I did, of course. And waited. And waited.

After an hour or a little more, I decided “Fuck this.” I was starting to think they’d done something with her, like I had fallen into a Robin Cook novel or something. So I thought, "Well, I’ll just search the hospital for her, then." And I did; I started where I’d last seen her and turned the hospital upside-down, basically, and I eventually found her after causing a great deal of consternation. Also, I threatened to take one of the orderlies outside and kick his ass because I didn’t like the way he was maneuvering her little trolley-bed thing. I woulda done it, too. He had a bad attitude.

I had a lot of trouble with the hospital staff over the course of Rhonda’s stay, actually. She’s a very sweet girl, and I’m sure the staff grew fond of her while she was there, but I would still bet they were glad when she left, ‘cause it meant I was going, too.

Anyway, so yeah, me and hospitals have a short but bitter history. I am alarmed by them; the obsessive cleanliness that comes alongside an inexplicable and unwholesome smell, the horrible-looking food on those mobile bookcases, the fact that they’re always cold make me a little bit uneasy, a feeling to which my natural reaction is extreme bitchiness. This, combined with the lack of trust I’m willing to place in some nobody (degree or not, if I don’t know you and believe in you, you’re a nobody) who is “caring for” someone I love, and the lack of interest I have in hiding this lack of trust, combine to make me a very difficult hospital visitor.

I reflected on all this as I started the long walk yesterday. But just as I began, the sun came out and it got warmer, and I thought of the excellent person I was going to see, and my mood lightened. I was still preoccupied, but a bit less…I don’t know. Angsty. Whatever.

I sang to myself, as I do when I walk; and I stopped by Kroger’s to buy a rose to bring along as a present. The song I was singing to myself as I stood in line to pay for the flower was Concrete Blonde’s “Happy Birthday”:

Smoking out the window
Feeling far away
News on the radio
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

The woman in front of me in line noticed this and, being friendly, asked, “So, who’s the lucky birthday girl?”

This, of course, is a perfectly logical question. In fact, it’s kind of a Sherlock Holmesian bit of deduction. I’m buying nothing except a single flower and singing a song in which the words “Happy Birthday” figure prominently. It makes sense that she’d assume that I was buying a birthday flower for someone, and it would be reasonable to assume that that person was a woman (though I love roses myself, no one ever buys them for me...I guess men aren't supposed to like flowers).

Unfortunately, my mind wasn’t working that way yesterday. I wasn’t paying attention to the song I was singing; it emerged randomly from my subconscious, and might as well have been “Honky Tonk Women” or “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” which I’d like to see how she would have reacted to those.

So I stared at her in confusion for a second, and then said something along the lines of “What?”

“Who,” she repeated slowly, “is the pretty girl getting the birthday flower?”

I still had no idea what she was talking about. Once my mind heads down a particular path, it’s kinda hard for me to make it change directions, and the significance of the song still had not impressed itself upon me. But at least she’d explained that she was talking about the flower. And one thing I definitely knew was who the flower was for.

“No, there’s no pretty girl. Well, I mean, there is…a very beautiful girl, in fact, but it isn’t her birthday. It’s nobody’s birthday. Well, nobody important, anyway. I mean, as far as I know. Tomorrow,” I hit on this happy but essentially unrelated fact for reasons that are not clear to me, “tomorrow is Whit’s birthday. But I don’t actually know her. I mean, I do, but we’ve never met. Do you know her?” She looked at me as if the flower was growing out of my forehead rather than resting in my hand. “Well, whose birthday,” I asked her, “is it supposed to be?”

“How should I know?” By this time, I think, she was sorry she’d said anything. “You’re the one buying a flower and saying ‘Happy Birthday’ over and over.”

“Oh, it’s nobody’s birthday. I just like that song.”

And then she walked away. Rather more rapidly than one would expect, and occasionally glancing over her shoulder at me.

And I, very happy at having (however accidentally) sown a little more confusion in the world, paid for my flower and went on towards the hospital.

The rose and I made friends over the remainder of the journey. It rode in my bag, but I had its head poking out so it could breathe, and it bobbed along next to me, just in my line of sight. I discovered, while walking, that rather than singing, or talking to myself, which are the ways I usually pass the time on a long walk, I was talking to the flower itself. Well, and answering for it, because flowers, you know, they don’t actually talk.

Also, the sex of the flower changed while we walked. When I’d first walked into the Kroger flower department, I’d just grabbed the first single long-stemmed red rose I’d seen. But then I’d glanced down and noticed this far more lovely rose. “Oh, no, pretty girl,” I said to it, “I like you much better,” and put the first one back to grab the one I ended up buying. But as we walked I found myself referring to the rose as “Little Brother” and “My Clever Boy.” I don’t know what the Freudian significance of that is.

What I do know is this: once I can afford it, I’m gonna start buying myself a fresh long-stemmed red rose every morning, to carry around poking its little head out of the top of my bag every day. I really liked the way it looked while we were walking together yesterday. Besides, it’s good company and stops me talking to myself, which, let’s be honest, I shouldn’t do as much of as I actually do.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, except for the homeless guy who seemed to want to make friends, possibly on the basis of the relationship I’d struck up with the rose. He followed me from Third Avenue to Fifth Avenue and into Kroger’s, where I thought I’d lost him, but he picked me back up outside, followed me back to Third Avenue ‘til about…27th or 28th Street, probably. Then he finally just kinda peeled off on his own. He hadn’t said a word. It was a good relationship, really, ‘cause I didn’t have to give him a cigarette. And, as I’ve said many times, the problem with this town is that everybody smokes but no one except me ever actually BUYS cigarettes.

The hospital grounds have many conflicting and misleading signs, and after walking an hour and a half to get there I wasn’t happy about being led on a wild goose chase trying to find the right door. But the staff was actually surprisingly kind and helpful, and maybe I’ll have to revise my opinion of these people, or at least the ones at St. Mary’s. And my visit was wonderful; she loved my rose, and she loved the books I brought her to read to pass the time, and she loves me too, and I made her happy. So, it was a good trip, and a beautiful night, and I’m still feeling great joy and peace from it. Love to all, and to one in particular.

Well and Widely Loved

2006-05-07T15:04:00.000-04:00

Well, went out last night. Sarah graduated yesterday, and there was a bit of a day-long celebration, apparently, though I only showed up for the end of it. Heather was in town as well, and I was very very excited.

He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark
"Excitable boy," they all said
And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark
"Excitable boy," they all said
"Well, he's just an excitable boy"

So, I saw Heather at the Study Center while I was writing yesterday, and she promised to call later to tell me where and when the shindiggin' was goin' on, and I was, as I say, excited. So I went home and took a shower and put on the CDs I made for her and drank wine (I started drinking at noon yesterday, but metered it carefully so that I never actually got drunk) and danced around my apartment like a mad fool. I called it a warmup, 'cause I figured we were going to the Stonewall, and I'd be tipsy and do a little dancing and convince a few fellas to buy my drinks. But, as it happened, the call didn't come 'til a little before 1AM. I stopped drinking at about 11:30, talked to Amy for an hour or so, and then we decided to just go to bed (separately, I mean; we had been talking on the phone) and read and try to fall asleep. So when the call came, I was a little surpirsed, and almost completely sobered up, and in no condition any longer for dancing. Oh, well.
It's good to already be drunk before you get to the Stonewall, because the place is outrageously expensive. I mean, it's okay that some bars charge a ridiculous cover, and it's okay that some bars overcharge for their drinks, but they should never be the same bars. If I have to pay $5 to get in, and then you tell me that a glass of rum is $8 and a bottle of beer is $3, I'm gonna be pissed. Memo to self: next time, bring a secreted bottle of rum along with.

More so than when I started
I feel older and this bottle
Is the place I choose to hide
And when I looked out from my bottle
And I saw you standin' by
I invited you inside
If the bottle makes you happy, so could I

I wasn't too worried about it, because I've gotten a lot of drinks bought for me over the years at gay bars. But I must be losin' it, must be gettin' old, because last night only one guy hit on me, and he didn't get up the nerve 'til after last call. I was polite to him generally, but I did call him out on this.
"Okay, rule number one when picking someone up in a bar: The very first thing you ask is, 'Can I buy you a drink?'"
That's actually rule number two, though. Rule number one is, don't approach someone if you're too drunk to speak clearly unless that person is also blind drunk and desperate to get laid. You don't wanna make a bad first impression, and there's no way to make a good first impression under those circumstances. This guy was stupid drunk, and that is an absolute turn-off. When someone you already know and love gets drunk, that can be fun; at the very least, it inspires you to want to take care of them. When it's someone you don't know, you just want them to move as far away from you as possible. Even if I wasn't madly and paralyzingly in love with someone else, that guy would have no chance with me (well, and also, he just wasn't that attractive, and I'm shallow). I did give him my number (mostly just to get him to go away) so that I can scold him today when he's sober enough to understand what I'm saying. He blew it. But, you learn something new every day. This will be his lesson. I hope it makes him a better person.
Even without being the belle of the ball I had a good time, though. Tracy, Sarah's girlfriend, is a wonderful dancer, or at least I enjoyed watching her dance very much. And she and I have never really talked much, so it was nice to have conversation with her. Sarah and I decided that we have not talked enough in the time we've known each other. I don't know how shy she is, but when I have a conversation with someone they're gonna have to do most of the heavy lifting; I let other people carry the talk. Sarah is like that, too, I guess, and so I haven't been as close to Sarah as I would have liked to have been. But maybe after a lovely evening I'll be able to spend more time with Sarah and Tracy before they leave, and we can make up for lost time.
The consensus, by the end of the evening, was that Heather and Sarah loved me and Tracy thought I was cool but would have to know me better before she'd commit, which, I can dig it. And Heather let me hold her in the alley behind the club for a long, long time, and that felt wonderful. More than wonderful, really, and I felt well and widely loved.

There was love all around, but I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all, 'til there was...the Stonewall?

Hmmm, that doesn't look right. I kinda regret having written that now. It's a little bit creepy. But, what's done is done. And at least I've got a fond, glowing memory of the place now.
Anyway, yes, we had a good time. I only bought one beer, but I finished Heather's last one and had a bit of Schnapps in the parking lot (or what passes for a parking lot at the Stonewall), and we stopped at my place after so I could grab a bottle of wine, and then we set out to go to Sarah's house. But the line at Taco Bell was stupid (though I did finally get to try Heather's much-talked-about Fiesta Potatoes) and then we got caught behind an endless freight train, and by that time Sarah and Tracy were passed out all over each other in the backseat. So I had them drop me on campus and I walked home, finishing the wine on the way and singing to myself very loudly.
Mostly I sang Throwing Muses:

Dancing with scissors our bones full of wishes
We wait for our plans to come true
Why do I like you? 'cause I do
Why do I like you? 'cause I'd kill to be you
Sweet nothing, sweet dream, serene

It was the first completely student-free night on campus, and so I could sing loud and not worry about anyone calling MUPD. And my heart was full of love and joy and music, and I was getting drunk again, too. It was a very good ending to a wonderful evening.
So, this is a big thanks to Heather, Sarah, and Tracy for the best graduation night ever. Much love to all three of you. Hope to see you again soon.

My Brain Works Funny

2006-05-05T14:06:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, I just really don't understand myself. I mean, I don't understand the method by which my brain operates (or commits malpractice). This fact both entertains and disturbs me.

It disturbs me because I'm just about the most introspective person I know. I am constantly examining my motives and thoughts and trying to figure out why I do and feel the things I do. Frankly, I find myself a more interesting field of study than most I've run across. So, after year upon year of doing that, it doesn't seem to me that there should be anything about myself that I don't know, no feelings that I can't identify or express in words. I mean, I'm not stupid, and it isn't as though I haven't put any effort into this. When something's going on in my brain that doesn't make sense, at least to me, I feel like I'm out of phase with myself, that I've made some obscure but colossal error.

But it's entertaining, too. Because the things that puzzle me about myself tend to be kinda goofy. I mean, it isn't like I looked around the other day and discovered I was a serial murderer or anything. I just have these ideas that make no sense and don't seem to come from anywhere, and they sometimes make for lovely surprises.

Such was the case today. I went home very briefly, and I could hear a hose running as I came 'round the house to get to my apartment. I was inside for about twenty minutes and then came out to head back to work. The hose was still going, but this time I saw it. It was tangled into the fence on the right side of the alley, spraying water onto a spot on the building. I didn't see it when I came in, and I can't absolutely swear that it wasn't actually being used when I'd passed before, but the immediate impression on me was that it had been there, spraying the house, for at least half an hour.

Now, the thoughts in my head usually don't just float around ethearally (is that a word?), or flash up like subtitles on a movie screen behind my eyes. They tend to come in a kind of weird, stilted Socratic dialog; and when I'm alone, as I was today, they don't stay in my head. I actually have a discussion with myself. This was the discussion that took place as I stood on my porch looking at the hose spraying on the house:

Me 1: Look, someone's watering the building. I wonder why?
Me 2: Well, the buildings back here do need a good power-spraying. [I live in 41/2 Alley, and the buildings are pretty dingy]. But why a garden hose? And why just spray that one spot endlessly?
Me 1: You misunderstand me. I didn't say they were washing the building or spraying the building, I said they're watering the building. They want it to grow.
Me 2: Ah, that makes more sense. But who would want the building to grow? It's pretty cramped back here already. Getting the mail is a nightmare.
Me 1: Huey [the landlord] would.
Me 2: Oh, so it could grow new rooms he could let out?
Me 1: Yeah. Or, more likely, the existing apartments would just get roomier.
Me 2: That would be nice. We could use some more room.
Me 1: Of course we could, but if the apartments get bigger, he'll be able to charge more rent for them.
Me 2: Oh, no, we couldn't afford a rent increase.
Me 1: True enough. Well, only one thing to do, then.

And I stepped across the alley and turned the hose off, thus saving myself and my poverty-stricken neighbors the anguish of a rent increase. Happy and satisfied, I then walked on to work. It didn't occur to me until I was halfway there that, first, that conversation made absolutely no sense at all (although while I was having it, it seemed perfectly straightforward), and two, I'd had it out loud. If any of the neighbors had their windows open, I wonder what they thought. Not that I care, but I wonder.

Anyway, maybe this was some responsible subconscious impulse to stop someone wasting water. I'd like to think so. That's noble in a very small way. But, boy, the thought sure took a strange and circuitous path between impulse and deed, didn't it?

Any shrinks out there? Anyone have any thoughts?

The Golden Anniversary

2006-02-14T16:39:00.000-05:00

Today, as you may notice from the date stamp, is February 14, 2006. This is a momentous occasion, though probably not many folks are aware of it. Horror film fans, though, may recognize this as an important anniversary: 75 years ago today the tradition of Universal Studio’s classic horror films began as Tod Browning’s Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, premiered in New York.

Now, I’ll admit that this film hasn’t aged terribly well. The acting is seriously over-the-top, for one thing. The script was adapted almost verbatim from the stage play, which is fine except that movies have (or should have) more scope than plays; Browning didn’t use every tool his medium supplied him with. I really hate David Manners (Jonathan Harker), who made a lot of money playing the boring “hero” in several ‘30’s horror films; Hollywood history would have been a bit brighter if he’d gone into another line of work. Lugosi, of course, wrung every ounce of melodrama out of his role, as was typical of his entire career. The man never did bother to become fluent in English, but in this early role his accent is frankly comical. Although the sets and atmosphere of the movie are beautifully scary at the beginning, when we’re in Transylvania, once the scene shifts to London the movie loses any edge it had. And don’t tell me the film’s problems are a product of the time in which it was made…Frankenstein came out just a few months later, and it is dramatically superior (and still holds up well today).

All that being said, this is still a movie that deserves respect. In the first place, the first bit really is good, even after all these years. Lugosi descending the staircase, passing through the cobwebs without touching them, that’s a great moment; and the face of Renfield (Dwight Frye) when he’s discovered in the hold of the Vesta, half-starved and gibbering mad, is one of the genre’s enduing and haunting images.

Also, of course, there’s Lugosi. Yeah, he hams it up terribly, and yes, he reportedly learned his lines phonetically (supposedly he didn’t know what he saying half the time, though he’d played the part on the London stage), but still, Lugosi is Dracula. In all of Hollywood history there is no actor more strongly associated with a role, and no character more strongly associated with the man who played it. Christopher Lee was a far superior actor who did a much better job in the role than Lugosi (and who played the part far more often), but it is impossible to think of Dracula without thinking of Lugosi, and vice-versa.

The big thing, though, is the film’s legacy. This movie basically saved Universal from bankruptcy. It led directly to James Whale’s Frankenstein project being approved, giving the genre its first non-silent classic. And it began the whole series of classic horror films from the studio, including The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, Werewolf of London, The Black Cat, and The Mummy (my personal favorite). Each of these films is better than Dracula, but each owes a debt to the original.

Dracula also demonstrated that Americans could, in fact, make decent horror movies. Prior to 1931, the genre was dominated by the great German classics, like Nosferatu, Der Golem, The Man Who Laughs, Faust, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. During the silent era, the only American horror film that could compete with these was Lon Chaney’s magnificent Phantom of the Opera; as brilliant as that film was, though, German supremacy in the field was largely unquestioned. In 1931 all that changed. After Dracula, American movies would dominate the genre until Hammer exploded onto the scene in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein.

And, whatever its problems, this is one of the most influential films ever made. The major Gothic sets from this film (Castle Dracula and Carfax Abbey) are still being copied today, all over the world. Every film villain is measured against the alien mystery of Lugosi’s vampire, and every monster killer stands in the shadow of Edward Van Sloan’s Dr. Van Helsing. Also, though Browning took a lot of grief (most of it justified) over his lazy and lackluster direction (this was his last picture for Universal before returning to MGM, and apparently he felt no compulsion to put himself out for the company he was leaving behind), he certainly had the photographer’s eye. Whatever else it was, Dracula was a beautiful movie. However tired the acting, the script, and the characters might be, the film itself is just lovely.

So tonight, I’m gonna buy a bottle of wine, I’m gonna go home and order a pizza, and I’m gonna lose myself in the original horror classic on its 75th birthday. Anyone care to join me?

Supercrazycool Illusion

2005-12-05T13:36:00.000-05:00

This guy is amazing. He travels around the world doing these 2-D chalk drawings that, from the correct angle, appear to be 3-D. Here's one as you're looking from the wrong side:

And now, here's the exact same picture if you're looking at it correctly:

I wish I knew this guy's name so I could tell you, but I don't. If anyone out there does, let me know so I can give him his props. I've included a bunch more of his work below.

Unbe-fuckin'-lievable

2005-12-05T13:27:00.000-05:00

Come Out To Play

2005-10-22T16:42:00.000-04:00

Well, the past week was better than the one that came before. I got a bit more sleep, didn’t get too crazy drunk (as far as I know), and finally have a little bit of money in the bank, which means I’ve put in my order for the “new” Skinny Puppy album (actually it’s about two years old now, but I haven’t been able to afford it). So that’s exciting.

There’s been interesting news, as well. In the first place, an unknown Beethoven manuscript just turned up in Philadelphia, which to me is just about the coolest thing ever. It’s a piano transcription by the great man himself of his “Grosse Fugue,” originally a string quartet. Apparently he did the transcription as he was dying, afraid that the piece (which had opened to scathing reviews) would die when he did, and wanting a version to survive. I don’t know how excited everybody else is about this, but I think it’s super-cool.

Also, who out there remembers the late-70’s trash classic The Warriors? Come on, don’t be ashamed to admit it; I know a lot of you have seen and loved it. In fact, maybe too many people saw and loved it. It obviously had an impact completely out of proportion to the amount of money spent filming it, or skill spent writing the dialog. Marion Jones did some commercials based on the DJ character a few years back, Twisted Sister mocked its final confrontation scene at the beginning of one of their albums, and Shaq can’t ever speak in front of a crowd without mimicking Cyrus’ booming call to the gangland armies: “CAN YOU DIG IT?”

For those who suffered through deprived childhoods (or weren’t old enough to be watching B-movies twenty-five years ago), the plot of the movie was pretty simple. There’s a gangland rally somewhere in the Bronx, where each of 100 different gangs have sent 9 delegates each to form a gangland army under the leadership of the charismatic and legendary Cyrus, leader of the Grammercy Riffs, New York’s biggest and most feared gang. The idea is that, with well-coordinated army of street-tested kids 60,000 strong, Cyrus and his people can conquer Manhattan (which, as Cyrus points out, is protected by only 20,000 cops)

But, just as Cyrus is ready to lead the mighty and poorly-dressed army to the promised land, tragedy strikes. At the climax of his speech he’s murdered. The murder is committed by Luther, the psychotic leader of the Rogues, but for reasons that have never been clear to me, he is able to shift suspicion to the Warriors, one of the gangs in attendance. The other gangs are outraged and turn on the Warriors, whose leader is murdered right there. The rest of them, though, manage to escape the rally.

They start to head back to their home base at Coney Island, but by now word is out about what happened in the Park, and every gang in the city is after them for killing Cyrus; and no sooner do they escape the territory of one gang than they find themselves under attack from another. And they can’t hide, ‘cause there’s a DJ (we never see anything of her but her mouth) announcing their progress across the city, letting everyone know exactly where they are and dedicating songs to them such as “Nowhere To Run.” So, it’s kind of like the Odyssey, only without ships and, you know, rather than Greek heroes there’s a lot of Afros and denim jackets.

And the gangs they meet! What a bizarre and well-imagined bunch of hooligans! Everyone’s favorites, of course, were the Furies, a bunch that dressed in Yankee uniforms and garish face paint, and (as you would expect) assaulted their enemies with baseball bats. The scene where the Warriors beat the hell out of the Furies with their own stolen bats is a classic of the genre (if, in fact, there is a genre associated with this movie). Also memorable are the Lizzies, an all-girl gang who bring the boys into their hideout under the pretense of hiding (and seducing) them, only to turn on them once they’ve got them off the street. And, of course, the Orphans, the gang made up of kids no other gang wants, whose only uniform is matching pea-green T-shirts and who weren’t even invited to Cyrus’ rally. The main cool thing about them is that Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, who also just appeared as Casey in The Devil's Rejects), one of the gang's girls, leaves them and joins the Warriors. Doesn't seem like the best time to do that to me, but hey, what are you gonna do? Anyway, I always thought if I had a daughter I'd name her Mercy, in honor of this movie (I tried to talk Pancho into this with his older daughter, but he wouldn't do it).

Between encounters with these folks, the Warriors meet a host of spectacularly-dressed but screen-time-challenged gangs such as the Boppers (my favorite outfits, but I always have loved purple silk). The Boppers' name, actually, kinda screws up the plot, since the DJ calls all the gangs looking for the Warrior "boppers." Still, cool outfits. If I was in New York in 1979 (well, and if I was black), I'd have wanted to join them. Pancho digs the Punks, roller-skating freaks who ambush the Warriors in a subway restroom. They seem to like stripes and overalls; kinda geeky, but it's a damn good fight scene. Finally of course there are the Rogues, pursuing the Warriors across the city and looking like they came fresh from a Guns & Roses video audition. When the Warriors finally make it back to Coney Island, it’s the Rogues who first flush them out, with Luther banging glass bottles together on his fingers and chanting, “Warriors…come out to play…” in a wail that gets gradually higher more ear-splitting the longer he does it.

And then in the last scene, the Warriors emerge from combat with the Rogues to find themselves alone on the beach, staring down every gang in New York. I’m telling you, it’s a classic. As the New York Times said in the original 1979 film review: “The film is as handsome to watch as it is preposterous to listen to, full of gorgeous nocturnal city images that splash blaring neon colors against filthy, rain-slicked gray. (Director Walter Hill) uses subways, jukeboxes, spectacularly eerie costumes and deserted streets to create a stark yet extravagant visual style, and a grimy little world in which everything looks curiously brand-new.”

If you’ve managed to miss it this long, go rent it immediately. And if you’ve seen it before, wipe off the dust and watch it again, ‘cause I’ve got some crazy news for ya. Rockstar Games, the folks who did Grand Theft Auto, are coming out with a Warriors game for the PS2 and the Xbox. Now, I don’t have either of those game platforms, but I’m still getting that game, just to have it. If you’re a friend of mine and I find out you’ve got a PS2, be ready for me to start bugging you to invite me over for game night.

I’ve seen the previews at GameSpot, and it looks really good. The thing that makes me happiest, of course, is that the DJ is still sending out waves of evildoers after our heroes…the game wouldn’t work without her. In fact, all the characters from the movie are there, and they did a real good job with the meshes and the voices. Check out the game's website. Also, action figures are being released, if you can believe that. So, basically, this is the happiest day of my life, I’m gonna go bliss out for a while. Will write an actual post tomorrow or something.