revision99

No, Really. This Blog Has Moved.

2006-04-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

As mentioned below, I have moved revision99 to a new location.

The new location has all the archives from this blog, all the softcore pornography, all the lefty rants, all the nostalgic reminiscences and a whole bunch of new stuff that I've posted since February 18, 2006. So if you came here to read revision99 you might as well go to the new place now. Here's the link:

http://revision99.com

While you're thinking of it, why not update your bookmark (or your "favorite," as Internet Explorer calls them) to the new address? Seriously, why not? And if you're one of The Precious Few who actually links to me, let's face it, it's time to update your blogroll, too, 'kay?

Thank you.

February 18, 2006: revision99 Has Moved

2006-02-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

The blog has relocated to
http://revision99.com.

I hope you'll join me there.

Message in a Cartridge

2006-02-12T23:07:00.000-08:00

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED. SEE BELOW.

Holy shit, Dick Cheney has actually shot a guy.

That's right, the Vice President sprayed a fellow quail hunter yesterday with shotgun pellets at a range of thirty yards. The shot hit Harry Whittington in the face, neck and chest, and he's in the ICU at a hospital in Texas.

For some reason, the Vice President's office didn't announce this when it happened on Saturday morning, and in fact didn't bring it up publicly for a whole day - after the shooting was reported on the web site of the local paper. They say they wanted to wait until Katharine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch where this took place had a chance to make the announcement herself, but of course I think otherwise.

I think Cheney has finally gone over the Rambo wall and is sending a message to Scooter Libby, Joe Wilson, Mike Brown(ie) and any other chickenshit "whistleblowers" that may be out there: "I might be the Number Two man in D.C., but I'm the baddest Dick in America and if you fuck with me I'm goan take you down."

Nobody really knows how many heart attacks the guy has actually had. He may not have that long to live, and he may want to take a few scaredy-cat, anti-American, fetus-killing tax-and-spend liberals with him. Of course, the guy he shot is a millionaire Texas Republican lawyer, but I'm just sayin' "watch your back."

Can you imagine what poor Karl Rove is going through right now? I sure wish I could have been there when he got this news.

The administration's poll numbers are down in almost every category, and most of them are below 50% approval.
Hurricane Katrina won't go away.
Michael Brown has developed political rabies and turned into a vicious, snarling beagle.
The lapdog New York Times ratted them out on the court-free domestic spying.
Libby's indicted.
Social Security "reform" is dead.
Delay's indicted.
Republicans are slipping and sliding up and down K Street on Jack Abramoff's grease.
The "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq are going badly and getting damned unpopular.
Even Rove himself remains under investigation by the bulldog prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

It must be hectic to spin all this stuff every day so that it looks like it was exactly what they had planned and that it really is a good thing for America and Freedom. Now this.

"Cheney did what!? Was it self defense? Please tell me it was self defense. Can we say it was self defense? I want every doctor in Texas at that guy's bedside, and no photographers. Oh, shit, what's his face look like? Never mind, I don't want to know. OK look. Here's our story. The guy circled around - he might have been drinking - and he came up behind Cheney - no, he snuck up behind. He didn't follow hunter's protocol, he didn't announce himself, it was his own fault. Get him to make a statement to that effect. It was his own fault.

"And God damn it, I don't want to see pictures in the Times of Cheney laughing and holding up a bloody quail by the feet."

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15, 2006: OK, it was funny for a minute, even though we all knew the joke was on poor Harry Whittington. But the party's over, and I am ashamed of myself for making light of it. Whittington is in much worse condition than I knew. Some of the shot has worked it's way inside, near his heart, and he's had a heart attack and been returned to intensive care, where they intend to keep him for another week.

Cheney did not go public with this story for somewhere between 18 and 22 hours. The White House is acting like they didn't have the full story for that long. Plus, they have been trying to make like Whittington himself is to blame for not "announcing his presence." This is bullshit, of course.

Why the long delay? Is it because Cheney was drunk? Where is the police report? Or is this just another example of Cheney and the rest of his arrogant gang withholding information from the public, simply because they can?

Every hunter will tell you that the shooter is always the one responsible. When you fire, you have to know where everyone is. If you shoot someone, it's your fault, end of story. At the very least, the Vice President should grow some balls, stand up, admit he made a stupid mistake and apologize to Whittington and his family publicly.

This is a case of criminal negligence. Fat chance there will be any prosecution, but at least Cheney should be man enough to take the blame. He will finally break his silence on television today at 6 PM Eastern time.

Surprise: He has chosen Fox News as the venue.

Be The Wave

2006-02-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

I wrote in my previous post that it may be possible to take back our country,

but that it would be necessary for everyone to help in the effort. Shephard suggested that I produce a list of whom to contact if you want to try and make a difference. So here's the deal.

Everyone has to participate. You have to learn about the issues, and you have to vote. You can educate yourself on the internet (you're already on the internet, right?) and also just by reading the paper and listening to news on the radio. Note that you will have to filter what you read and hear, but the only way to get good at that is to do it. It may take some time, but if we don't get involved in what's happening to the world we deserve what we get. For example, we have only ourselves to blame for the current administration in Washington. These guys won on the slimmest of electoral margins, while many of us stayed home. What if we had all voted?

In between elections you have to challenge politicians who do bad things. You can do this by taking part in demonstrations and by writing to your elected representatives and to newspapers. It's important to make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you. How else can our elected officials know how we want them to act?

To summarize:

Learn what's happening to your world.
Stand up and be counted in public ways. Don't be afraid. Get some shit on your Permanent Record.
Tell your representatives what you think (write to them).
Tell everybody what you think (write letters to the editor).
Vote. The Republican strategy has been to make you stay home on election day. They are not the majority, but they can win if we fail to oppose them at the polls.

Here are a few resources:

Project Vote Smart. Type in your zip code at this site and get a list of all your elected representatives, including links to their web sites so you can get their addresses and write to them.
The Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington used to be conservative, now she's liberal. This is the direction everybody goes when they learn what's happening in the real world. No matter - her site provides a forum for writers, artists, observers, politicians and pundits of all stripes, from centrist to leftist. You get to talk back to all of them.
Donkey Rising. Also known as EDM, or The Emerging Democratic Majority. Here you'll find (centrist) strategy and analysis of just how we will take back the nation. Again, you are able to contribute to the conversation.
Open Secrets. Who is paying for your government? Follow the money at OpenSecrets.org.
National Public Radio. Fair and in-depth reporting on news of the day. Read the news or listen online, or find your local affiliate station. There must be a reason the Republicans keep wanting to eliminate their funding.
Move On. News, inspiration and involvement opportunities. Also, somewhere in there is a guide to writing effective, likely-to-be-published letters to the editor. (Someone let me know when you find it, OK?)
TruthDig. This is where Robert Scheer went when the LA Times fired him for being too liberal. An interactive site featuring news, commentary and videos "...for people actively seeking to understand the world..."

Obviously this list is not exhaustive, nor is the Right represented at all (they do a fine job of that themselves). Not only that, but some of this stuff is hard reading. If we'd been paying attention for the past two decades this wouldn't be necessary. But if you are concerned about the future, get started!

This is not a time to be timid. We can't afford to lay low and keep out of sight. But we can improve things if we all take part. We haven't come this far only to have Big Oil take over the government, strip us of our human and civil rights and send us off to Permanent War. If you're afraid now, how will you feel when The Patriot Act is made permanent and the Supreme Court declares that anything is legal if the President says it is?

A groundswell is beginning. See the wave. Be the wave.

To The Streets

2006-01-31T11:24:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a big. long-winded political post for the past few days,

photo stolen from truthdig.com

but after a while I realized it was all about me, which is not what I intended. I'll finish it and put it here soon, but not today. Here's what I want to say:

You can make a difference in our government. For half of American voters (and who knows how many non-voters?) it feels like the country has been stolen away, and there's nothing we can do. I won't take the time now to go through the litany of abuses we have been subjected to by the Rove/Cheney/Bush Administration. If you're reading this you probably have your own list anyway.

But the government doesn't respond to us, and many, myself included, have halfway given up. I just want to say that not one of us is going to change things, but all of us together can make a difference.

When the people took to the streets in the 1960's and 70's, we didn't change things. We didn't depose two presidents and bring an end to the insane and pointless war in Vietnam.

What we did was set the stage for those things to happen. We created a climate in which Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern could say "Damn! There's a constituency there! Maybe I'll run for president on an anti-war platform!" We let Congress know that if they investigated the corruption and the crimes of President Nixon, there were millions who would back them. We gave them cover to be brave. It may have been only for a few months, but it was long enough to throw a criminal out of the White House.

Well, there's another criminal there now, and there is very little political will to do anything about it. The Right has been effective at shutting us up, but they have never had much of a majority among the people of this country. Likely they are not in the majority at all.

There is no reason for us to remain silent any longer while our rights are taken away, our country becomes the most hated in the world and Big Oil runs the government. The Republican electoral "victories," if you want to call them that, were on razor-thin margins. Decent people everywhere are tired of the smell coming from Washington. The administration's poll numbers are the worst they have ever been. In an election held today they would be swept from office in a landslide.

There are State of the Union demonstrations tonight in cities around the world. Go to one if you can, and make some noise. The Democrats in Congress need your strength. They need to know that you want them to act. Their performance against the Alito nomination sucked, because they were afraid to be bold. Write to them and let them know you support vigorous action to take back the country, that they will not be punished for taking bold steps. Let them know that there is a constituency for honesty, integrity and action!

As I have said before, we will not be able to throw Bush out of the White House. That doesn't matter. We have the opportunity to clip his wings and expose him as the useless and venal sack of doodoo that he has always been, rendering him powerless for the remainder of his term. If the Democrats make gains in the November elections this year we can start to reverse the right-wing trend that we have allowed to take place, while we watched silently, in ever-increasing shock. If we loudly let the Democrats know that we are there for them, that we are the majority, that we will not sit still for any more of the same, we can get this country turned right-side up again.

By yourself, you can't do it. But without you, we can't do it.

The revolution starts today.

No One Expects the Pope of Love

2006-01-25T21:41:00.000-08:00

So it seems Benedict XVI is coming down squarely on the side of getting it on.

I say you go, Ben! As a sexually repressed former Catholic, imagine my surprise and relief on reading Pope Benedict's new encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est" (God is Love), a teaching letter in which he encourages men and women to say "yes" to their bodily natures. "Love," says the Pontiff. "...we cannot simply abandon it. We must take it up again, purify it and give back to it its original splendor.” Yes! This is his first encyclical, the one that most Pope-watchers say will set the tone for a new pope's entire reign, and indeed Benedict has said that he wants Love to be the keystone of his papacy.

So this guy is going to be The Pope of Love. This comes as kind of a surprise because remember, his previous job in the Church was as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, known historically as The Inquisition. This led some of us to think maybe he would become the Pope of Bondage and Discipline, but certainly no one expected the Love Pope. I mean, in this letter His Holiness actually goes so far as to say sex "...is, indeed, ecstasy..." Naughty Pope! Of course, he goes and spoils it a little by adding that it must be between a married man and his wife, and yes, the wife has to be a woman, and there is to be no "intoxication" and there has to be "self-sacrificing love" or else the whole thing is degrading.

Still, I have to hand it to the guy. He's been celibate for like 60 years. There's a pretty good chance he can't remember the last time he did the nasty, and yet the first thing he writes as Pope is this cheerful guide to "ecstasy." We may be starting to see a thaw in Holy Mother Church. In the next five hundred years I fully expect to see a softening in her stance on sexy lingerie.

Worn, of course, within the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. By the woman.

Time to Impeach

2006-01-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,

against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

__The 4th Amendment to The Constitution of the United States (emphasis mine)

This is the entire text of the 4th Amendment. The guys who wrote it were trying to avoid the kinds of personal invasions they had been experiencing, perpetrated by a system in which a monarch, claiming authority from God, could send police or troops to snoop wherever they wanted, confiscate whatever they saw and use whatever they found against whomever if it suited their purpose. It is admired everywhere in the world, although not always by totalitarian regimes.

Now President Bush seems to have violated this precept. He has publicly admitted that he has used an agency of the federal government (the National Security Agency) to wiretap citizens of the United States. He has said that his administration did not have warrants for their actions, nor did they seek warrants, nor do they intend to, despite the fact that there is a law requiring such warrants and providing a fast and secret way to obtain them through a special court. He has said that he intends to continue this program of surveillance.

Read the amendment again, and keep in mind that it is settled law in this country that "searches" include wiretaps.

Then tell me: How is this not an impeachable offense? Just so you don't have to read the FISA statutes, let me tell you that violation is a felony carrying a five year prison term.

There is no way in hell that this president will be convicted and thrown out by the current Congress, or even the one that will be seated after the midterm elections this year. Impeachment merely means an investigation and a trial. It would get President Bush's attention, and probably cause him to pay more attention to the "march of freedom" right here in this country. It would allow Congress to reassert its authority and oversight responsibility, which it has recently abdicated. A chastened George W. Bush could finish out his term, walking the line of good behavior, instead of swaggering over it. Only good things would flow from an impeachment at this time, while failure to stop this power grab would be a setback for individual freedom in our country.

It's the House of Representatives that initiates impeachment proceedings, so if you'd like to see a restoration of our federal system of checks and balances, write to your congressperson. Later, you'll want to let your senators know how you feel.

A Dream of Falling, Part 2

2006-01-22T22:01:00.000-08:00

[This post refers to the previous post.]
My dream has several possible meanings.

I don't believe dreams are "sent" to us. I don't think they are visions, and I don't believe they allow us to see the future or know things we couldn't otherwise know, like the exact moment our twin brother drove his car over the side of that mountain road in Tibet, or who was the last person Lacey Peterson saw.

Still, it is our own minds that put on these shows for us while we are sleeping. In essence it is one part of ourself telling stories to another part. If, during waking hours, I thought I was scaling the side of a ten-story building, or floating down from the top of it, you'd all think I was crazy, and you'd be right. But if it happens in a dream, it's OK. It's a window into my subconscious. It is me explaining what I think, what I fear, how I feel. To me.

I have had dreams in which I was terribly afraid. There was something that was going to "get" me. When I was very young it was often something known, like whales. I had a recurring dream when I was a child that I was being chased by a huge whale, and if I got out of the water it could come right up on land and continue the pursuit. Later my sleep was disturbed over and over by having "seen" The Flash. I grew up during The Cold War, when nuclear holocaust seemed inevitable. I would wake in horror, sit up in bed and wait for the shock wave, which would be a few seconds behind the flash and would vaporize everything. Never mind the bad science: This was scary.

These days I am too sophisticated for such foolishness, instead dreaming about vague, disquieting dread. I believe consciously that I can handle anything knowable that might come at me, so my mind can't show me a picture of what it is that I must fear. It's nothing that has a form, nothing I have seen in my waking life. On mornings after these dark, moody dreams I am jumpy and blue.

All of this stuff can show me something, I'm sure. I'm just not sure exactly what. What can I learn about myself from this dream? Maybe that I believe...

It's the journey - the climb - that is important. I scale the wall, and I am among the few who have a chance to reach the end, but it was the climb that held my interest, and so I delcine to bring it to an end.
There is always another way. The limited options imposed by our society can be transcended, and the consequences of not doing what is expected - making a try for the roof, in this case - are not so bad.
I am weak. I can't close. I do all the work, and I do it well, but I don't make the final leap. I don't have the faith in myself to go all the way to the top. I am afraid to compete for the highest position. I don't deserve to see the roof, or whatever is over that ledge.

This last is troubling. I could have tried to climb up to the roof, to reach the pinnacle. Who knows what rewards I might have found? And if I had tried and not made it, the results would have been exactly the same as if I had not tried at all, but merely gave up.

So why don't I try?

A Dream of Falling, Part 1

2006-01-21T17:40:00.000-08:00

It begins in a phone booth.

I am inside, the door closed, talking to someone, or listening to someone, I don't know which and I don't know who. In the dream, the phone booth feels like a normal phone booth, but it isn't, really: It's all glass, on all four sides and the roof. It's in an alley between two tall buildings, on one side a modern blue and silver and gray skyscraper, on the other an imposing old structure of rough red brick, a relic, perhaps, of the golden days before the Great Depression. The phone booth sits incongruously in the middle of the alley, where it would block traffic if there were any traffic.

I become aware of objects hitting my phone booth, falling from above. When I look up at the glass roof, I see that living things, animals - maybe pigeons - are falling from a great height and splattering on the phone booth and on the pavement around it. I look again and I see that it is not only birds, but people who are falling to their deaths.

But there is no garish, bloody carnage, no screams of terror or pain. Instead there is silence, and as each falling body meets its fate it merely splatters into a translucent fluid, which flows down the sides of my glass phone booth and puddles in the alley.

Then I am out of the booth, and I am scaling the side of the red brick building. I have no safety line. I am pulling myself up hand over hand, using the jutting bricks and various ledges and windowsills as handholds and footholds, slowly working my way up. I am surrounded by other climbers, each laboring silently except for an occasional groan of effort. The other climbers are not with me or against me. We are all just trying to make it to the top, ten stories above.

In time I arrive just below the roof, where a large ledge juts out above me. Exhausted, I hang there for a while. I can't figure out a way to get past this ledge and up onto the roof. It sticks out too far. It seems like I would have to climb upside down for a few feet in order to get into a position to haul myself up to safety. As I think about this, I am holding on to a rail or a rain gutter with both hands, and I am suspended there, a couple hundred feet above the alley. Looking down I can see that people - other climbers - are still falling off the building from various heights.

I see a man in roughly the same situation as me, and to my astonishment he lets go of the rail we are hanging from and somehow manages to leap up and away from the wall of the building, gets a grip on the very top of the ledge and drags himself up to the rooftop and out of my sight.

I realize that he has done it the only way it can be done. A leap of faith. He could have missed the ledge. If he had he would have fallen for sure, as there was no retreating from the move he'd made. My grip is weakening, my hands are sweaty, and my options are limited: I can try for the roof, or I can hang there until my strength gives out and I fall to my death.

I hang there pondering this, I don't know how long. Then I realize I am dreaming, and there is a third option. I close my eyes and let go. The descent is not like a fall. I float, and awaken.

Naked If I Want To

2006-01-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

Play

Would you let me walk down the street naked if I want to?

Can I buy fireworks on the fourth of July?

Can I buy an amplifier on time?

I ain't got no money now,

but I will pay you before I die.

Meet the New Guy

2006-01-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty tired of the Samuel Alito confirmation hearing.

I hesitate even to bring this up because so many bloggers have written about it so exhaustively and the truth is I don't really have anything substantive or unique to add. But I have listened to the whole fucking thing so far (thank you, NPR), and I feel as if I myself have been through a grueling process. Maybe not as grueling as whatever Mrs. Alito thought she was undergoing when she burst into tears and ran sobbing from the hearing room, but bad enough that I think I should get to vent a little here.

I wish I had a television in my office at work, because then I could have watched the hearings as well as listened to them, and you know I would have. It would have been better to watch, because then I would have had an image to go with Alito's voice, and it might have given me a better, more integrated impression of this guy who wants to be on the Supreme Court for maybe the next 40 years. But I had no image, so I have to go with what I picked up from his voice.

I don't like him.

He doesn't sound that smart to me. I don't care about his humble beginnings and his degrees from Princeton and Yale. I know quite a few dumbasses who went to big-name colleges. President Bush, for example. So I don't buy the "smart enough to do this job" argument, even if it is being made by other judges (who really shouldn't be going to Congress and promoting one of their own in testimony before a political committee - WTF - but that's not the issue here.). Hey, I was drunk for fifteen years during the seventies and eighties, but I still remember every club I joined, and I haven't been prepped for testimony by a flock of flaks and handlers. Sam says he can't recall being a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and he is shocked - shocked! to learn that they were (are?) a racist group who thought that there were too many blacks and hispanics being admitted to the old school, and God damn, women wanted in to the eating clubs.

It just doesn't sound smart to me. I mean, after he's confirmed, what if he just forgets about the Sixth Amendment? It could happen. I mean, even though everybody else in the United States knows about his membership in the Society of Bigoted Princeton Grads, he doesn't remember, and in three months of preparation the only answer to the inevitable question he could think of, even with all the help that Rove/Cheney/Bush could give him, is "I don't remember." Well, I should say that on the second day of questioning, he added that he didn't renew when his initial membership ran out, so that's pretty creative, I guess.

Still, I see only two possible explanations for this situation. One is that he's a racist who joins racist organizations and wants to keep minorities "in their place." Since he now claims he doesn't remember any of this, a corollary might be that he's a liar, like Clarence Thomas, who claimed he had never thought about or discussed with anyone the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision. The other explanation is that he's stupid. I'm going to guess that he's not a racist (humble beginnings, remember), but that leaves lying numbskull, and that doesn't make me want him on the court.

For the past three days I've listened to his earnest, halting responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I come away with the impression that he's a guy who's working way over his head. Maybe he studies real hard and writes down all the facts in two columns on foolscap, one column labeled "For" and one "Against," and maybe he can manage to use that technique to come to legal conclusions that take the Constitution into account. But he seems to lack the quick wit, humor, intelligence and intuition that that I want in a guy who will be judging the most important questions we as a society can come up with for the next two generations.

And this is not even to mention that he is an extreme right-wing guy, an avid follower if not much of a leader. I mean, eewww.

He's going to be placed on the court, of course. If the Democrats had anything to stop it, they would have brought it out before the hearings. The Princeton Bigot thing, his record of siding with corporate interests and government over the little guy, his sitting on cases in which he has a clear financial conflict of interest, his long-standing opposition to abortion rights, his whining wife - none of that will stop his confirmation. The Republicans have the votes, and they have the votes to change the rules in the Senate and stop any idea of a filibuster, too. I tried to warn people before the 2000 election - the winner gets to pick a bunch of judges - but the complacent left - the actual majority - stayed home, and look what a mess.

Now I have to hope the Dems can wrestle back a congressional majority in the next three years, and make laws that can't be interpreted by the new court to mean that the President gets to do anything he wants, because he's the President, damnit!. That's a feeble glimmer of light for me, but it's all I have, and the Republicans seem lately to be trying to sabotage themselves just at the moment when they could almost - dare we say it? - rule the world.

Peace Talk, Part 2

2006-01-03T23:07:00.000-08:00

I keep visualizing whirled peas.

Anonymous Coward has taken issue with my "giving up on world peace" post, but his statements are buried in the comments section of another post, hidden from your view, so I thought I'd bring it out in the open with a new post. His articulate remarks are near the end of the comment section of New Year's Wish, 2006, if you'd like to read them.

Actually I don't think he really disagrees with my claim that there will never be peace on earth. A.C., who calls himself Smerdyakov Karamazov (the morose and epileptic Karamozov sibling from Dostoevsky's novel), comments in a tone as if meaning to challenge my assertion that three powerful groups (politicians, arms dealers and soldiers) will make sure that there is never an end to war. But instead of showing how world peace is imminent, or even possible, he goes on to point out the need for troops on various battlefields, and how these troops actually do good things, like saving the families of children. And he notes some positive outcomes of deploying troops:

Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia weren't exactly lolliops and gingerbread before we got there either - just like Iraq was pre-2003. The UN noted that 5-6000 children were dying every month due to lack on immunizations. That's 60,000 kids every year for over 10 years. Their health post-invasion is something to be hopeful for. The restoration of the Iraqi marshes is something to be hopeful for. Quasi-democratic elections in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan are something to be hopeful for.

I think if you read his two comments, you will be moved as I was by his words, and I don't want to belittle what is obviously an emotional and personal conviction. Nor do I want to argue that soldiers never do anything good, because obviously they do. But if we or any nation are going to try to do "good" in the world by sending armed men who are trained to kill, I suggest that it will only lead to killing, which will lead to revenge killing, which will lead to more killing, and so on.

Let's not be disingenuous about the purpose of armies. Sure, the soldiers can feel "...personal honor and courage..." and I don't doubt the reality of their feelings. Sure, good works can be done - the weak defended, bridges built, water purification systems provided, and more. But if you had to define the nature of an army, would you say "It's an organization that experiments with radar"? Would you say it's a group who likes to sing patriotic songs? Of course not. The nature of an army, and we all know this in our hearts, is violence and the threat of violence. Armies are killing machines. And they're not going away, which means to me that war is not going away.

Thousands of years of unending and escalating conflict seem to support my view. I'm getting used to the idea. What about you?

Next Year: 2006

2005-12-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

Here in Southern California, it looks like we will be rained out of the old year, and rained into the new.

I don't mind a bit. Last year's deluge made this Fall's persimmon-fest the most bountiful ever. And I'm not even going to get into the cherimoyas and the white zapotes. Yes, I have kinky fruit trees, but aside from that, I love the rain. I don't remember if I complained about it last year, but if I did I shouldn't have. Los Angeles, by rights, should be a desert. I read a report some years ago that said there was only enough water naturally here to support a community of 80,000 people. There are ten million of us just in LA County alone, and that's not counting those who choose not to be counted or the ones who live outside the county but are actually part of the county in one way or another.

So when it rains here, it is a special, sacred moment, a rare blessing. It's never enough, but while it's happening I feel like I am part of nature, at one with the universe, instead of a squatter in a foreign land that doesn't need or want me. Look, water from the sky! We're saved! I don't run outside and get all wet and twirl around in it, though. Not unless the cameras are rolling.

A lot of bloggers seem to think it's a good idea to recap the past year, because it's almost over and we're starting a new one. This is helpful to me because I can barely remember what time I went to bed last night, much less what crime against reason was committed by what administration official in March (oh, yeah, it was the Terry Schiavo fiasco). Even so, I don't pay much attention to these annual reviews. Life goes on, despite the numbers we put on the years. I haven't figured out if it's a circle or a straight line or maybe a downward spiral, but it does seem to be just one damned thing after another, and bundling the events of one arbitrary time period into a package to reflect on doesn't make much sense to me.

Still, I just want to take a moment on New Year's Eve to make a couple of observations:

I am the only one (so far) among those I think of as my blogging buddies who is blogging today, the biggest party day of the year. So, no matter how I try to paint myself here, I guess I have no life.
I am deeply grateful to those same blogging buddies for all you have written over the past year, the first full year of revision99, on your blogs and in my comments section. I feel like I have made friends here, and thanks in part to you Precious Few, I have learned something about my place in the world. It's not as exalted as I'd hoped it would be, but knowing where you stand is important if you're going to move on.
I've made at least one enemy here, someone whom I thought I knew a little bit, and who surprised me with obnoxious personality quirks and bizarre attitudes about life. You're probably not still reading here, but if you are, may I say "fuck you?" (I have addressed my specific grievances in no uncertain terms directly to this person in private email. So if you didn't get the email, it's not you.) I haven't learned my lesson, though, and I continue to think all the rest of you are the charming and clever people you seem to be online.
Some bloggers that I read have disappeared, and I miss them. I find myself checking for new posts on defunct blogs, hoping they'd come back. Some just stopped writing, some made announcements and stopped writing, some took down their sites and some left the old sites intact, like ghost towns, full of the past, but no life. I wish the rest of you wouldn't do this to me - have you no concern for your readers with no life? What, you got girlfriends, jobs, new homes, new hobbies and now you can't sit down occasionally and ~~call your mother~~ write a little note on your blog? I know we all hoped we'd have readers when we started doing this, but how many of us anticipated that we'd be setting up expectations, and things we do (or stop doing) actually affect people we don't even know? If I had a million readers I guess it would be easier to quit, but you Precious Few are really so few that I could totally afford to buy you all brunch if you came to my town on the same day. When the day comes that I have to say goodbye, I see now that it could be as tearful as any real life separation. And, sure, brunch will be on me.

That's it. I know you're all getting ready for tonight's parties. Chances are you won't see this until 2006, but just in case, when you're all smooching and toasting each other at midnight, raise a glass for me. I'll be sleeping in front of my television, and dreaming of you.

The Circle of Life

2005-12-29T15:10:00.000-08:00

In the beginning there was dirt.

And the dirt was good. So good that a little tree sprouted out of it, God knows where the seed came from. Birds, probably.

Then came sun and water and after ten or fifteen years the little tree said "Now I will make some persimmons," and so it came to pass that in the fall three hundred big, fat, sweet, juicy persimmons hung from the little tree's branches, until the little tree cried out "Pick these things and eat of them, would you?

And so a harvest was mounted, and it was bountiful, and there was much climbing of ladders and plucking of ripe persimmons and fending off hungry mockingbirds, and there was joy and shouting in the back yard. Soon the bushels were filled with extravagant fuyus, enormous orbs of orange sweetness to rival the pear and yes, even the exalted papaya.

The harvest exceeded our ability to consume. Persimmons were eaten at every meal, pressed upon every friend, and all the relatives and every coworker until each person turned and walked briskly away when they saw us coming with our shopping bags full of fruit.

And still there were more persimmons. And they were starting to get very soft.

And so it came to pass that on that last Sunday in December, four days and four nights after the Solstice, the remaining persimmons were introduced to obscene amounts of sugar, butter, flour and many and varied spices - cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg - as well as raisins, fresh lemon juice, chopped pecans, and the mixtures and batters were formed into loaves and dropped onto cookie sheets, and the baking, oh, the baking went on throughout that day and into the night, and when it was over and the kitchen was nearly as hot as the fires of hell, behold! The persimmons were transfigured into life-giving sweetbread, and verily I say to you...

cookies!!

New Year's Wish, 2006

2005-12-26T00:34:00.000-08:00

I'm ready to give up on world peace.

It's a sweet sentiment, it's been dear to me for most of my life and you hear a lot about it this time of year, folks hoping for it, praying for it, wishing for it in the New Year. I've done all of that hoping, praying and wishing myself, and a little bit of working for it. But it's not ever going to happen, and here's why.

First, there are a lot of people who profit from war and the threat of war. Leaders of nations benefit because in time of war no one is likely to throw them out of office, so they get to hold on to power, or at least bolster their popularity. If it takes a war to hold on to power, that's fine with them. They will find an enemy and promote a jingoistic fervor so that they can be President or Prime Minister or Premier or Grand Hoo Ha a bit longer. You may be thinking "No, there are real enemies. They're not made up, and we must defend ourselves from them." If I'm right, and I think I am, in every case someone has cooked up a false pretense for going to war, or preparing for one. If we have a real enemy, perhaps it is because we are their imagined enemy. In any case, the regular people, not running the country, have to go along because they don't know if maybe the President knows something they don't.

Another group that profits, literally, are arms dealers. When you're in business you need to sell stuff, and the biggest sales have always been the guns to "defend" the country. These days the term "guns" means sophisticated weaponry like guided missiles, smart bombs and the elaborate technological infrastructure to make it all work. These are big ticket items, and most governments will pay literally any amount to get the best armament, no matter what sacrifices their people may have to make. Needless to say, this powerful and wealthy group can and will do whatever it takes to make wars inevitable. It's good for business.

Then there are those who actually fight the wars. There are two groups here: the generals, men who have grown up thinking about war, studying war, planning for war. They have been in uniform all their adult lives, and war is their business. They don't see diplomatic solutions - they see military ones. Some of them may simply be trying to stay "in business," but most are just doing their jobs, and following what they think is a "proud tradition."

The other group is the soldiers, the eighteen year old boys bursting with testosterone and eager to prove their manhood. It's easy for the other groups - the leaders, the arms dealers and the generals - to persuade these kids to become cannon fodder: Most of them are eager to go. They don't believe they can be hurt, they long for adventure and they are unable at their age to contemplate the brutality and futility of what they are ordered to do. If they waver in their ignorance and resolve, a patriotic speech or a good strong sermon will restore their urge to join the few.

We've been slaughtering, torturing and enslaving each other since the beginning of time. We've refined our weapons and our techniques until warmaking is nearly a science. In every war both opponents think God is on their side, that it is they who are righteous, that this is the way to solve the world's problems.

And yet we have not solved all the problems. The same ones keep cropping up: the need for more resources, the hatred of someone else's religion or skin color, economic crisis, the need to defend one's past arrogant and cruel behavior. Each time, war seems to be the best option, and our leaders, in cahoots with the gun sellers and the generals are forever sending our boys to fight and kill their boys, to come home dead, or maimed or crazy and believing that they have brought justice to "the enemy."

I'm sad to say that I don't think the habit can be broken. It's been going on too long. There's an establishment that benefits, and can't see any other way. There are eager boys who think it's fun, who will endlessly replace the worn-out veterans. So I really am giving up. I'm going to stop worrying about it so much. I'm going to stop wishing and hoping that, in my lifetime, humanity will come to it's senses.

And if I say another prayer, I won't ask for anything so foolish as world peace. I'll pray for something more realistic. Like cookies.

Winter

2005-12-22T00:33:00.000-08:00

The first day of winter, 2005.

The longest night. Maybe I won't sleep. I haven't stayed up all night in years. The things that once kept me up all night have faded, the urgencies, the emergencies, the crazy buzz.

I'm afraid though.

I go outside on these long nights and walk in the streets and feel alone amid the parked cars and closed up houses decorated for the big holiday. It feels good to be alone, with no false heartiness, no empty bravado, no season's greetings. Peace on earth. Season of love, season of hope. Season of desperation.

Los Angeles is the coldest city, paved for a hundred miles. Even the rivers are made of concrete. The smiles are so hard and bright they have lost their meaning, and the brilliance of the lights hides the stars themselves.

We have defeated winter. We have put the storm windows in storage and moved to the coast and turned on all the lights and there will be no longest night, and this darkness will not seep into our souls. Winter, we have felt your chill, and we are not afraid. We will gather together with the ones we love and we will eat and sing and put lights on the roof, lights on the trees, we will light fires against the cold and dark.

Winter doesn't care. Winter says You have to deal with me. You think you've escaped, but you've only imprisoned yourself with your decorations and your lights and your pavement and your season's greetings. I am cold, I am darkness, and I am coming to your town, wherever you have built it, and one of these times I may decide to stay.

I'm almost alone on this longest night, just me and the silence and the parked cars. From under one of them, a small animal watches me, a cat. It is careful but not afraid, and I want to touch it, to pick it up and cradle it near my heart, feel it's heartbeat, talk to it of spring and life, feel it's warmth, learn it's bravery.

But the cat knows what I want, and it runs away.

Round and Round for the Holidays

2005-12-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Kids, when you grow up and buy radio stations, as I'm sure you will,

whatever you do don't let a computer program your Christmas music! I mean this, kids. Computers are have no clue how to do this right. They will play the same title back to back, several times a day, and they will think it's OK because the recordings are by two different artists. They will not, as a good human program director would, warn you when you have limited the play list to too few songs. For example, thirty songs. Or thirty tracks, because really there are only twenty songs but some of them are by two different artists. And because of their diligent adherence to your wrong-headed choice of only thirty tracks, they will cause your on-air talent to become surly on the telephone, knowing that, even though it is the holiday season, they cannot fulfill your innocent holiday music requests, unless you happen to be requesting one of the songs on the stupidly abbreviated playlist, but why would anyone do that, since those songs are already playing incessantly?

I've been listening to a radio station in Los Angeles (KOST 103.5 FM, if you must know) that is playing nothing but Christmas music throughout the holidays. At first the orgy of sentiment was satisfying and fun - cheerful, uplifting holiday songs playing in the background while I worked, picked persimmons, did the dishes, drove around in the car. Good times, really. Gradually, the music faded from my consciousness, and my life was simply imbued with the warmth of the holiday season, as if a chipper and loving Victorian angel were riding on my shoulder, whispering words of acceptance and good will in my ear.

But, as with all stories of this type, soon I detected trouble in paradise. A nagging irritation began bubbling to the surface of my mostly empty mind. It was Burl Ives singing Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas, like twenty times a day. Are there not enough Christmas songs? Do they have to play this one more than, say, once a year? Apparently, computer says "Yes!"

Not only that, but once I became aware of the repetition I started to hear a lot of it, and I mean a lot of it, including the maudlin Christmas Shoes by Newsong. I think the computer is fucking this up, for me and everyone who likes music. KOST is owned by Clear Channel, a corporation which owns 1200 radio stations around the country. You think it's a bit of a challenge to make a mix tape for your girlfriend/boyfriend? Try programming 1200 radio stations with 24/7 music. I'm not saying this is a good idea, I'm just saying that they couldn't do it without computers. Probably Steve Jobs should get involved and donate some of those super-creative Apple computers with i-Tunes connections and "golden ears," because those big Unix mainframes, the ones Clear Channel must be using, are just not hip enough.

So I'm back to my CD's. I have a friend with whom I have been exchanging cheap Christmas CD's for ten years now. The rules are: one CD per year, bought at a grocery store or a pharmacy, and costing less than five bucks. I give her one, she gives me one, every year. Sometimes we break the one-disk rule when we find some really cheap CD's, like in January (then we buy a few and hold them until the following Christmas - can't give Christmas music in Superbowl season).

In this way I have accumulated...

Elvis' Christmas Album
Nat "King Cole, The Christmas Song
Tony Bennett, Snowfall
Bing Crosby's White Christmas
the ever-popular Drug Emporium Traditional Holiday Favorites Volume 1

and a stack of generic collections of original hits and remakes by Hall and Oates, Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms, Burl Ives, Judy Garland. Pat Boone, Amy Grant, Chicago, Mary Hart(!), Lou Rawls, Don McLean, Donna Summer and more, more, more! I'm on a thirty-day binge of musical holiday cheer!

I'm still looking for The Beach Boys Christmas Album and Phil Spector's Christmas (mono version). I have them on vinyl, and they're all scratched from frequent rum- and egg nog-fueled playings and shufflings, plus they don't work in the mp3 player. Not hearing these two classics is making me contemplate holiday self-mutilation, so please help. If you have one or both of these CD's, for God's sake burn me a copy! I'll swap you my Drug Emporium compilation.

As always at Christmas time, my heart throbs with holiday good will for you all.

Snowman On the Roof

2005-12-16T21:15:00.000-08:00

I grew up in Minnesota.

There's still some debate as to whether I have actually "grown up" even at this late date, so let's just say that I spent my childhood there in the Northstar state. My earliest memories of the Winter Solstice were of snow and cold and the world hunkering down against the elements. The quintessential Christmas image for me is a house - more like a cottage, really - huddled at dusk amid snow-covered pine trees. Smoke from a fireplace curls from the chimney, a golden light flickers in the windows, and snow is falling. The roof and ground are already white with the stuff, the walkway only a vague wrinkle in the soft blanket. The picture is soundless, muffled by the snow. There's a pine wreath on the door. This image speaks peace and coziness to me. When I am inside this house, I have no concerns but to let the fire warm me and the love surround me.

Those who live in the upper midwest know what a sappy, unrealistic image this is, but I can't help it: I'm hostage to a nostalgia for something that never was, an idyllic world of peace and tranquility that exists only in my memory. But it's as real as any of the "real" things in my past.

I was a child when I left the north country, so what did I know of frozen crankcases, heating bills, shoveling sidewalks and the expense of acquiring a protective wardrobe for an entire family? These were worries for my parents, but not for me. All I knew was snowball fights, diving into snowbanks, sledding, skating on the lake and the crystalline beauty of the landscape after a snowfall.

Now that I live in Los Angeles I am haunted by my snowy past. Every year at Christmas I hear the snow songs: White Christmas, Let It Snow, Sleigh Ride, Jingle Bells, Baby It's Cold Outside, Frosty the Snowman, etc. ad infinitum, or so it seems. I hear them and the images flash in my head and I feel a disjointed melancholy as I make my way around sunny Southern California, shivering in the 50-degree evenings like some effete lotus-eating beach-dweller, which in some ways I guess I am.

But in other ways I'm still that skinny kid on a sled, racing down that steep, bumpy hill at the edge of the park again and again, oblivious to the cold, the snow that gets inside my coat and down my neck only a momentary distraction from the fun I am having, which is making me feel exactly as if I am in heaven. School is out, snow is on the ground, the sun is shining, the hill is steep and I am flying!

I can't go home again, of course. I won't go looking, not awake. I'll just enjoy the palm trees in the sunshine. We have Christmas lights that hang from the eaves of the houses. We think they look like icicles. And we have inflatable snowmen with lights inside them. Sometimes we put them on our roofs, because none of us knows for sure where snowmen come from, or where they belong.

Dreamer

2005-12-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Please don't wake me. No, don't shake me. I'm only sleeping.

Twenty-five years ago today in New York City,
a deranged and sad little man, whose name is of no importance,
shot and killed John Lennon, bringing to an end
a life of genius, joy and love,
and leaving millions bereaved. John was barely forty years old,
and we have no way of knowing what gifts he had left to give.
They may say he was a dreamer, but he's not the only one.

Coasting to Christmas

2005-12-05T22:18:00.000-08:00

I started right after Thanksgiving listening 24/7 to KOST 103.5 FM in Los Angeles.

They call this "KOST-ing" (pronounced "coasting"). They are playing nothing but Christmas music 24 hours a day until December 26th. I can't believe I actually missed a couple days of this at the beginning, but I am on the Christmas train big time now, at work, in the car and during those otherwise introspective moments at home. I am Father Christmas, awash in good cheer.

But a byproduct of this total immersion is that one begins to realize how many Christmas songs have been remade by new, ever-younger performers, and each new generation seems (to me) to have gotten a little farther away from the original meaning of the song, until you end up with something like Whitney Houston's hideous, overwrought version of A Christmas Song. Hey, Whitney: Christmas is supposed to be a time of hope and joy. You don't have to torture every note until it cries for mercy.

Don't get me wrong - I think Whitney is a gifted artist, and once we get a little distance on the substance abuse and the general flakiness we'll no doubt begin to see her as a latter-day Billie Holliday, but I mean, I grew up with straight Christmas carols sung straight: Jingle Bells, Gene Autry singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, choirs doing Silent Night, 101 Strings with classics like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Oh, sure, over the years there have been some less-than-antique songs that have squirmed into the lexicon of classics: Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, Bobby Helms' Jingle Bell Rock, Mel Torme's original The Christmas Song.

Still, it always jars me when a new one comes along, and my natural inclination is to resist adding any new songs of the season. Like, I remember the first year I started hearing The Little Drummer Boy. It was by The Harry Simeone Chorale, and it arrived for Christmas, 1958. I was just a kid, but this song rubbed me the wrong way on several levels:

The bible makes no mention of a drummer boy. So they are making up stuff that didn't happen. And don't throw Santa at me. This is my indignation. Go get your own.
My own mother would have smacked me if I had beat on a drum around a newborn infant. I assumed the mother of God would do no less for her little savior.
"The ox and lamb kept time?" Give me a break. Oxen and sheep have no rhythm.
Who were those guys singing "Parumpa pum pum?" Couldn't they find a real drum? Grown men making funny noises = just embarrassing, for everybody.
Finally, it is not a gift to play a drum for a baby. A gift would involve giving something. He could have given the drum, for example. Then there would have been no song. Fine with me.

But the song hung in there, in spite of my scorn. Soon there were 150 covers of it, and 25 million recordings sold. Twenty-five million. How could it not be a classic? I mean, Christmas is all about the bling. Twenty-five million sales brings a lot of bling. So, long story short, I hated it for about five years, but now The Little Drummer Boy is one of my beloved Christmas favorites, heavy with the emotional freight of many holiday seasons. Eventually David Bowie got on board, and I saw him singing it on television with Bing Crosby! Talk about cognitive dissonance. But we're not talking about that, are we?

But, in general, what do you think makes a young singer or band want to do a Christmas record (CD)? Is it because they just love Christmas, and want to share their excitement with the world? Or maybe they want to show the parents of their fans that they are not bad people, even though they have shaved their heads, injected pints of ink under their skin and wear safety pins as jewelry?

There's probably a commercial reason (ya think?). Many of these recordings sound like throwaways, and yet there is an automatic audience for them, and KOST will play them for sure. When you're looking for hundreds of hours of holiday programming you can't afford to leave any stone unturned. But, even this early in the season, and as full of holiday spirit as I am, there are a few I wish I didn't have to hear again:

Barry Manilow, For All the Children. The children thank you, Barry. Now please go sit down.
Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton, Baby It's Cold Outside. This may be the only version in which a conclusion to the seduction is tacked on. Of course Rod wins Dolly over. She stays, he chuckles, creepily. In my dream about this, he can't get it up, even to fuck her tits.
The aforementioned Christmas Song, by Whitney Houston. This is done in the style of Mariah Carey, and Whitney should know better. Every note is drawn out with dips and trills until even a marathoner would be out of breath, and still the phrases go on and on. Just stop it!
Barry Manilow again, for his almost-exact ripoff of an arrangement of Jingle Bells released in the 1940's by Bing Crosby with the Andrews Sisters. Did he think he wouldn't get caught at this?
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Bruce applies his own tortured growl to this happy little children's song. At least they try to have a little fun with it, but really all I get from this is "Gosh, maybe Phil Spector really is a genius after all." (Note: Springsteen's version is a direct rip of The Crystals' 1963 version on Phil Spector's "Christmas Gift" LP. Can't these guys think up their own arrangements?)
Burl Ives, Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas. When this hayseed holiday classic hit the streets in 1965 I thought Burl Ives had been dead for at least ten years. Now it looks as if he'll never go away. (Composer Johnny Marks also wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and, incredibly, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. I think if you are vocally flexible, you could sing Holly Jolly and Rockin' Around to the same accompaniment. But really, why would you want to?)

However, I am Jones, not Scrooge, and I like stuff, too:

Judy Garland's lush, heartbreaking Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
Please Come Home For Christmas, by Aaron Neville, The Eagles, B.B. King, and more.
Elvis' Blue Christmas. The King. 'Nuff said.
I'll Be Home for Christmas by The Beach Boys. Has any boy's choir sounded more angelic?
John Lennon, Happy Christmas (War is Over). Hopeful and useless. My kind of song.
Eurythmics, Winter Wonderland. Take me with you, Annie.
Oh, Holy Night, Al Green. Absolutely spine-tingling. Tell it, Reverend.

You've got more, of course. What are they? Come on: 'Tis the season for making lists.

Postal For the Holidays

2005-11-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

So, Merry Christmas, everybody.

We've started to receive anonymous telephoned death threats at my office. The first calls came in the weekend before Thanksgiving. On Monday of that week I arrived to find my usual entrance was locked, and there was a typed sign on the door that read "Please Use Front Door." I dutifully went to the front door and was confronted by uniformed cops. Not confronted, actually, but they gave me the once-over as I entered. Later I discovered that all the doors except that one were locked, so the police could see everyone who entered, and presumably trap the crazed gunman or booby-trapped terrorist inside the building. Personally I'd rather unlock the doors and get him outside the building and way down the street, pretty much as soon as possible. Cops will be cops, I guess.

When this first started one of the managers of my company went home, and he hasn't been back to work for over a week. In the beginning I was told that the death threats were directed at him, and he was concerned for his safety and for his family. This made sense to me, as he is a miserable tyrant who attempts to demand respect without earning it. Nobody likes him - not his staff nor his customers. I've never met his family but I imagine they are not too pleased that he is now home with them 24/7. He has few discernible job skills and no tact or social grace. So yeah, who wouldn't want to blow him away?

But now I hear from someone who spoke to the wannabe killer on the phone that the threats were somewhat generic, and any one of us could be in for it. (Disclaimer: I do not take this seriously in any way, despite the locked doors, police presence and now undercover security guards. You shouldn't worry about me any more than I am worrying, which is not at all.) In the interest of not further compromising my already sketchy anonymity and losing my crummy job, I can't utter the exact nature of our business here, but let it suffice to say that most people would like nothing better than to unleash a violent, bloody attack on our kind.

So where does this one guy get off taking the threat personally, and taking a whole bunch of time off to boot? The only positive thing I can see here is that maybe his fear has made him aware that he is a turd who needs to mend his ways a la Scrooge before it's too late. But even that shining light is dimmed by the fact that he is getting a lot of free time while I have to stay here and work!

Well, I have a "real" office (closet-sized, but real) with a locking solid-core door and walls that go all the way up to the ceiling (eat your hearts out, cubicle workers). I have brought my pile of cheap supermarket Christmas CD's to keep up my spirits and my adoring wife packs a lunch for me every day, so I could hold out in here for a couple of days in the event of a siege-slash-hostage-situation.

Now excuse me while I check the employee manual to see about hazardous duty pay.

My Head, It Hurts

2005-11-16T01:08:00.000-08:00

I had a migraine a few days ago.

Not the kind I used to get when I was young, a blinding, debillitating pain that wracked my cortex for a day and a half and made me throw up, or want to, and took me out of commission for days afterward. I don't get those anymore, but I still get migraines.

At least I think that's what they are. It's in my head, so no one can see what I see, and no one can tell me what I have. But I had a swirling, shifting, writhing, silvery blind spot in the middle of my field of vision, which over the course of forty minutes moved out to the edges and eventually went away, leaving my eyes unwilling to look at anything bright, my ears unwilling to listen to anything loud and my head full of gravelly cement.

These vestiges are still with me three days later. Everything is difficult. I walk the halls with my eyelids drooping, almost closed. My job, which is child's play, seems impossible. Driving on the freeway I find my car rushing up to the back of other cars who aren't going the right speed. In the mirror, my face is haggard and colorless. I wonder who I am, who is this man who can't do anything, who can't stay awake and can't sleep. There's a piece missing from the middle, an empty place where my identity should be.

I've been through this before, once or twice a year, and each time I am grateful that it isn't worse, like when I was twenty-five, and I had to go to bed and hope for sleep because no amount of aspirin would help. I always wondered what brought these things on, and I never found out. I'm just glad that I no longer wake up disoriented, dirty and disheveled, in an alley behind a cantina in Juarez.

Fellow sufferers, tell me of your pain, as misery loves company.

Not In My Name

2005-11-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, your protest song is ready.

Note: If you don't want to read the following long explanation,
you can hear the song ("Not In My Name")
by clicking on this clenched fist.

I've been having a lot of fun for the past four or five months writing a protest song for the 21st Century. I've been able to spend about eight minutes a week working on it, so it's not like I'm only producing like a minute of music per month or anything. If I were working on it full-time, adding up all these eight-minute segments I figure I would have finished it in a day or so.

For those who weren't here or don't remember, let me fill you in on this project.

On June 6th of this year, my good friend MPH at the blog Heightened Thoughts wrote the words "Where's the music?" You can read the entire post here, but the gist is that we live in a world of violence, injustice and corruption, and our musical artists are strangely silent about it. Silent, that is, compared to the power and the energy exhibited by the musicians and songwriters of the 1960's and 70's. In MPH's words, "What you had was a collection of artists really responding to the world around them...And it was powerful." Today's music scene, according to MPH, is just not providing us with the inspirational rallying songs of days gone by.

Fair enough, and maybe even true.

So, to help rectify this state of affairs (and have a little fun at the same time) I issued this challenge: If you are really angry, if you really want to protest, if you really feel like marching and singing, send me your angry lyric ideas and I will set them to music, record them and post the results on my blog. Who better to do this, than someone like me, the Oldest Blogger, who was actually there in the sixties and seventies, even though I don't remember a lot of it? You can find my original challenge in the comments on Heightened Thoughts.

Then I began to hype the "uncontest." Those of you who weren't here for it can catch up by reading...

this
and this
and this.

Those are the main three posts in which I exhorted you, dear readers, to send me your song ideas. If you take the time to read them now or later, you will also have the pleasure of re-reading the entire lyrics to "Eve of Destruction," which I posted to show how easy it is to write a protest song.

Most of you were not eager to try this. Maybe you are not as angry as I thought you were. Maybe it was a stupid idea in the first place. But I did hear from some of you, and I also visited a lot of your blogs and captured your ideas for use in the song. Because, as I told you, the penalty for not writing this song with me would be that I would write it myself.

So here it is at last: "Not In My Name." Those of you who helped, wittingly or unwittingly, I thank you. This list includes (but is not limited to)

MPH of Heightened Thoughts
Carla of No Bad Days
Theresa the Hot Chik
Ron Southern
Tacit One of Symbiosis
Aydreeyin, who has quit his old blog
Steph
L of Random Speak
Wichita Brent, who has all but stopped blogging
G.D. of Lions and Tigers...
the redoubtable Slinky Cat
Digitalicat
SJ the Mom
Emma Goldman of War On Error
Alex
Drink More Jack
My brother Rick, who played the Big Strum guitar part

and all the others from whom I may have stolen an idea. My plan here is to spread the blame around, so everyone gets a thin coat of it and no one - especially me - has to bear the entire responsibility. Don't bother emailing me to have your name taken off the credits, because I won't do it.

To hear the song, click the angry fist at the top of this post. Warning: This is a five and a half megabyte download. If you have a DSL or cable connection you should be OK. If you are on a dialup, a smaller file (but still pretty big) is available by clicking this green "play" button . This version will only work for Windows users, and probably only if you use Internet Explorer.

Milestone

2005-10-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

One-Year Anniversary.

I just realized that today is exactly one year since my first post on this blog. I thought about it a couple of months ago, and decided I wouldn't mark it with a nostalgic entry reminiscing about the things I've learned, the people I've met here and in real life, the blogs I read, the blogs that have come and gone and all the history that has taken place in the real world, blah, blah, blah. But then I forgot about it until just now.

Weirdly, it has been a rollercoaster ride for me. I wouldn't have expected it to be, but there you go.

As always, my heart longs to fly to you.

Front of the Bus

2005-10-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

Rosa Parks

1913 - 2005
May we all be worthy
of your defiance and your bravery.

Kick Me Hard In The Ass If I...

2005-10-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

Rev my engine at stop lights.
Wear leather pants.
Talk down to a child.
Let you sweat out your own computer problems when I know how to fix them easily.
Don't listen.
Use advertising slogans instead of real language.
Won't admit when I'm wrong.
Feel sorry for myself when others have it so much tougher.
Attempt to comb over my bald spot.
Receive your signals and still don't get the message.
Try to play lead guitar on "Bhodisatva" while drunk.
Ever again say anything to hurt you.

The Best I Ever Had

2005-10-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody: Guess who has a blog!

Peter Townsend! That's right, Pete Townsend, a real rock star, the guy who wrote "My Generation," who created and performed Tommy, the only "rock opera" worth a shit, who led The Who through thirty-plus years of maximum rock'n'roll and who punched Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock in 1969.

I have played rock'n'roll for much of my adult life (some would say it has prevented the onset of my adult life), and I have performed with, recorded and talked with a few celebrity types, but the one guy I wish I could meet and get to know is this guy. He is one of the founders of what we now call Rock, and his music has influenced many of the artists whom I consider to be the best in the business. Plus, he's been an articulate spokesperson for his generation (also mine) for all these years.

What's more, he's never developed a hipper-than-thou attitude, even though he is arguably the hippest man in the galaxy, and has earned the right to do a little talking down if anyone has. He is generous and inclusive in his art and in his thinking, and now he is posting a new work of art on Blogger, and is making it freely available to anyone who finds it.

On Blogger! Of course, you're asking "Did he fill out his Blogger profile completely?" Yes, he did! Interests, favorite movies and books, his actual age (Yesss! He's older than me!). And there is even a blogroll of some favorite links.

It's called The Boy Who Heard Music, and it looks like it is going to be a novel. I have just started reading, so I can't really review it here, but so far it appears to have a few autobiographical elements in it. A young man from the countryside goes to the city and manages to become a rock star. Here is a taste of his ghastly look at the future of music, after it has been taken over by corporate interests:

A bizarre but critical aspect of the programming would pivot on the discovery that the one form of entertainment and art that penetrated in a direct way to the audience was music. It would cause unpredictable results. So the barons would slowly begin to exclude the most vigorous music from all their programmes. They would reduce the power and effect of music by making it generic, abstract, universal, insipid, meaningless – it would become like an aural colour wash. The same colours would be used again and again, and for all kinds of purposes. What would once have inspired suspense would inspire disinterest. What would once have induced calm and serenity would inspire apathy. Music would promise spiritual ecstasy at the same time as selling soap. Music that mattered to you would matter equally to someone else. Music that meant little to you would mean just as little to them. Music would be like rain and sunshine, benevolent to everyone. Nothing unique about us would be reflected in this music. Nothing spiritual would be tormented or excited by it.

Yikes! You can check out The Boy Who Heard Music by clicking on Pete's smiling face above. Warning: Somehow he has gotten the chapters out of order, but as of today there are five of them. Chapter Five is all the way at the bottom, preceded by Chapter One. The one at the top is Chapter Four. Just scroll around until you find whatever chapter you need next.

Solitaire

2005-10-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, for no reason I can figure out, a chill floats down onto me.

Cold settles on my shoulders, and when I try to shrug it off, it only slides farther down my body, until I am shrouded to the ankles in chilly fog.

Through this fog it is difficult to see clearly the people I love. Their faces are blurry and vague. Are they smiling, or laughing? The music in me becomes distant and muffled, and I can't make sense of it. Like the sound of a band in the gym when you are smoking in the parking lot, it has no clarity, only a dull thumping, and I can't find the melody, can't catch up with the beat.

The things I do seem useless. All my projects - the protest song, the ongoing writing project that is this blog, the books I want to read, the music I am trying to record, the computer I plan to build, the places I want to go - who cares? Not me, not now. Would it make any difference if I did them or not?

Sometimes I go outside late at night and stand in the deserted street and look at the sky. Even through the haze and the lights of this big city and the fat October moon I can see a few stars, and I expand into the universe and I feel huge and empty and weightless with the the stars and after a while I can see the little guy down there on the street, so small, his arms waving toward heaven, and I think What do you want?

But I get no answer. From the street, from the stars, I get no answer.

Staff of Life

2005-10-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

White bread. Bad for me. But my weakness.

Today I found a half-loaf of white bread in the lunchroom. I was walking past when I saw a brown paper bag on one of the tables. Curious as always, I went in and took a peek. In the bag was the half-loaf. A round, bakery-style loaf of heavily processed bleached white flour, gluten and yeast, the kind of bread that has no nutritional value and starts turning into paste as soon as you put it in your mouth, then goes in and sticks to various parts of your insides, possibly forever.

I turned and quickly headed for the door, but the bread started calling my name. One little taste won't be missed, I thought. So I went back and took a little bite.

My whole addictive system throbbed with pleasure. It was moist and soft, slightly chewy. Not a gourmet experience. More of a pig-in-mud experience. There was no butter, no cheese, no spread, and none was needed. There was also no bread knife.

I ripped off another piece of it with my bare hand, this one about the size of a small eggplant, and began stuffing it in my mouth. I held the remnants behind my back in shame and stuck my head out the door. No one was in the hall in either direction, so I hot-footed to my office, still pushing more of the glorious gluten into my face.

I got crumbs all over the floor in my office, but I didn't care. I haven't had bread like this in years. Get behind me, Worthless Loaf! Cease your siren song! Luckily I only had an hour of work to go before I could get the hell out of there, and back to my home, where I keep plenty of emergency celery.

Yum.

The Swiss Are No Longer Neutral

2005-10-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Are you the Mystery Cougher? Am I?

Today at 5:30 in the afternoon I heard the new Ricola commercial on the radio. I immediately pushed the button to switch to another station, and they were playing the same commercial. Weird, I thought, and hit the button again, and heard the same commercial again. Thinking I had somehow switched back to the original station, I hit the button again, and heard the commercial for the fourth consecutive time. These guys are really carpet-bombing us.

I was forced to figure out what it was about, and now I share with you:

Ricola makes cough drops, and they have always had strange advertising. I remember one on TV that involved some guy in quaint Swiss folk garb blowing on a 20-foot Swiss horn in a subway car, for example.

But the current campaign is truly bizarre. They have a Mystery Cougher, a man (or maybe a woman, they hint) who goes around coughing near people. If you hear him and offer him a Ricola cough drop, BINGO! You win money, up to a million bucks! If this works, we will all have to buy at least one package of Ricola cough drops, and start offering them to anyone who coughs around us, because who can take a chance on losing a million dollars? I'm assuming this is a nationwide campaign, so that's a lot of damn cough drops. But would you accept a cough drop from a stranger? Would you offer one? Would people call Homeland Security on you if you did?

Looks like we may find out.

The Hill

2005-09-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

I trudge up the hill, alone in the dark.

This is the hill that the kids came to in their cars all those years ago, after football games, after Friday night dances, and I can almost hear the giggling and the urgent exhortations. Boys and girls parking beneath the oil derricks on this desolate piece of land, a giant hump right in the middle of the city, lit by no light but the moon, disturbed by no sound but the grind and screech of the big oil pumps, sucking life from the hill like huge iron mosquitoes. The oil had mostly dried up ten years earlier, but a few pumps remained to make sure that every drop was sucked out. A lot of the derricks were still there, too, standing silent watch, ten-story weathered wooden lattices, relics of the drilling, no longer needed but not worth tearing down. The pumps huddled indifferently under their bases, pumping always.

Once you got to the top and parked the car, the view was breathtaking. This was before the streetlights were orange, and in the night the city stretched like a glittering sequined sheet all the way to the harbor, and the black ocean beyond could have been the very edge of the universe. You felt like you were flying, just standing there next to the car. I did, anyway. I might have been the only kid who actually saw the view, because even though I had a car, I never took a girl up there, to watch the submarine races, as we used to call it. I cruised it enough times, though, to know what it looked like, and I felt good up there alone, above it all, needing no one.

It's the steepest hill in the region, and back then the pavement ended halfway up. Above that were just the twisting oil company access roads, dirt and gravel. No one lived up here, the derricks your only witness, except for the occasional squad car. Tonight as I walk, high-priced apartments line the freshly blacktopped roads, cheaply built boxes put here to cash in on that view, contoured into fancy-looking architectural shapes through the magic of styrofoam. The hill has been remade, too, primped up with landscaping and terraced lots for the houses, cut sharply into the earth. The derricks are all gone now, and the few stubborn oil pumps are hidden artfully behind stands of palms and local shrubs.

Once there was a nightclub at the very top of this hill. You'd drive along the deserted road in total darkness for a quarter-mile, you'd be aware of music playing somewhere, then abruptly you'd come upon a dirt parking lot lit by a few bare floodlights on makeshift poles. At the far end of the lot was the nightclub, looking like an island of corruption. An impossibly garish neon sign blinked

Cocktails Cocktails Cocktails,

and another promised

DANCING.

It was a low-slung cinderblock building with a boardwalk across the front of it, and a western style rustic wooden rail, like a hitching post. The bar served beer and shots, the bands played R&B and there were pool tables in the dark nether reaches. It might have been called The Hilltop Club, or The Rendezvous, or The Ron-Day View. There's no trace of it now, and I can't find anyone who remembers.

The hill had its own police department, company security left over from the oil boom, and maybe that's why the ID check at the door was not as rigorous as in the city below. For whatever reason, my friends drank there. Come on, Jones, the Lost Boys would say. They don't care how old you are, as long as you're spendin' money. I didn't see the fascination, and my fear of being thrown out was greater than my curiosity. I regret not going now, like so many things I didn't do.

In the end, I played in the band there, so I saw the place anyway, from the inside. I was too afraid to go in there just to see if I could fool them, but it was OK to do it if they paid me. I was not old enough to be working there, but no one ever asked about that. On stage I was a screaming showoff, shouting the blues like I meant it, but during the breaks I disappeared into the shadows, the better not to get found out and ejected. The irony of this behavior eluded me at the time. Strangely, none of my smartass friends ever saw me perform there, and eventually I came to wonder if they really ever went there.

Now I live in the shadow of the hill, and tonight I cruised it, like I used to. I don't know what happened to the old roads. They're not merely gone - their spirit is erased. There are guardrails and asphalt where once there were abandoned jalopies and loose gravel. Somehow, intersections and street signs have been contrived. The seedy nightclub has been razed and at the top, there's a little park, a lookout point with a stone wall around the perimeter, concrete benches and a statue. Even the park is two-thirds paved.

I leave the car a few blocks down and walk up toward the park. I wonder if any of the boys and girls who used to make out here in cars are living in these town homes, and if so, are they living with the ones they made out with? When I reach the top there are teenagers there, some couples, some groups. I'm pretty sure I know what has drawn them here, but they are safely contained in the bright enclosure, so their natural urges are stymied.

I stand at the stone wall, and the view is still breathtaking. The streetlights below are mostly orange now - is that what makes it less magical? Or is it that we know each other better now, the city and me? I own a piece of it, and it owns a piece of me. I think about flying over the city, like I did when I was a kid, but instead I just feel like I'm falling, and in fact I stagger back from the stone wall, catching myself before I actually take off. After that I leave the teenagers behind, as I always have, and go back to my car.

When I get there, I stand by the side of the road and take in the unauthorized view for a moment. The city has grown. It is so big and bright now that it eclipses the stars and dims the moon. It is full of living, dying, trying, crying. And out past the harbor, the very edge of the universe seems closer than ever.

Don't Think Twice

2005-09-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

I was spellbound for two hours last night watching Martin Scorcese's Bob Dylan documentary "No Direction Home."

Maybe it's because of my age -- I was sort of there for the original events -- but I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. What a thrilling time that was, and how exciting it must have been for young Bob and the others who speak in this film: Dave Van Ronk, Maria Muldaur, Suze Rotolo (she's on some of the old LP covers), Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples - more than I can recall. New York City, 1963. The baton is being passed from the Beat Generation to Dylan and his circle. There are a million places to play. Dylan and the others are sponges, soaking up the old guys like Woody Guthrie, and each other, learning new music, new styles, new voices, and actually saying something in their songs. It's not a concert show, but I was still fascinated and hugely entertained. Catch Part Two tonight (Tuesday, September 27, 2005) on PBS. In Los Angeles it's on KCET, Channel 28 at 9:00 PM, but I think it's a national presentation. This is history, folks, but fresh enough to feel contemporary. Most of the original players are still with us.

While I'm at it, I just want to say "Hurray!" to National Public Radio's coverage of the ongoing hurricane disasters on the U.S. gulf coast. These stories, mostly on the afternoon news show "All Things Considered," are precious documents. Heart-warming, heart-wrenching, visceral, surprising, maddening, informative, in ways I just don't see the mainstream media doing. The 79-year-old woman who lived alone, floating inside her one-story home on her Stearns and Foster mattress for eight days before she was rescued ("It must have a lot of wood in it..."). The New Orleans pump station worker caught by NPR's reporter dozing on the job - because he had not deserted his post for three weeks nonstop. The man who sent his family to safety and doesn't even know where they are, while he stayed behind to assist whomever he could in his 9th Ward neighborhood. This is why we need public radio and television, my friends. Tune in and see for yourself.

As always, my heart is yours alone. And again, I might owe some of you an apology. Please forgive my transgressions. I am socially inept, and I should know better.

Blow Me Down

2005-09-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

Avast, me hearties!

Did ye know it's Talk Like a Pirate Day? Skuttle me skippers if it ain't! Arrrgh...

Happy Birthday, B.B.

2005-09-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Riley King, also known as B.B. King,
turns 80 today, September 16, 2005.

"I've been around a long time
I've really paid my dues."

Yes you have, man.

I Will Lay My Burden Down

2005-09-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling funky, and not in a good way, since the Katrina disaster.

(Click here to play background music.)

It's none of my business, really. We all have our disasters to cope with - hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, suicide attacks, not to mention our personal tragedies. Most of the time we are simply aware that shit happens, and we grieve, we deal, we move on. That's what I do.

But there are facets of this particular mess that linger and sting past the usual spoil date, and as I go through my daily motions I have this nagging heaviness that makes everything thing seem off, somehow. I am too scattered to make a lot of sense of my feelings. I don't get paid to make sense. So here's a list of thoughts:

A beautiful, atmospheric, historic city has been so heavily damaged that the pain has shot through our entire national nervous system, jolting even the jaded Californian, the preoccupied New Yorker and the usually sanguine midwesterner. I have not wanted to say this in public, but for therapeutic reasons I think I have to: I believe that New Orleans can never be the same. Something will be rebuilt there, for political and economic reasons, and feisty residents as well as outsiders will give it a go, but it won't be the city of my dreams, the one I never got to see in person.
The administration that scared the shit out of everybody and then sold itself as the only possible protector of America in the event of another huge disaster seems to be exactly as unprepared for Katrina as it was for the attacks of September 11, 2001, even though this time they were warned days in advance. Four years later they still can't read the signs, they still have no coordinated plan, rescue personnel are still talking on different radio frequencies (that is, they are not talking to each other), and the best they can muster is a lame duck figurehead with nothing to lose "taking responsibility."
Twenty-eight percent of the population of New Orleans was living below the poverty line, a line the right wing cannot lower fast enough to keep people above it. Yeah, they were mostly black, but black or white, they have had to leave. I'm a middle-class guy, and I figure I could hold out maybe three months in another city before I would have to restart my life. New Orleans won't be ready for a year, which is about 51 weeks longer than those lower-income folks can afford to wait. They will make homes and lives wherever they happen to be, and they will never return. On so many levels, that will kill the spirit of the city.
Forgive me for focusing on New Orleans. It's just that the city is the icon, not the Gulf coast. I am aware that this tragedy extends for many miles along that coast, and that only compounds my depression.
Are we all criminals? People were stealing televisions.
Wherever you go in this country, for all of our self-satisfied posturing, the black people are the poor people. But don't worry: Soon the whackjob Right will control all the branches of government, and they will begin to create a whole bunch of poor white people, too, a new world order in which 85% of us live in poverty, 14% are unthinkably rich and one percent are untouchable.
And speaking of controlling the entire government, could John Roberts please answer one question about how he intends to act when he is the fucking Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court for life? Any question, instead of this mannered dance he is doing with the Judiciary Committee. Based on what he has told us so far, I wouldn't hire him to flip burgers. And yet he is a lock to be put in charge of the Court until your childrens' 20th high school reunion. He will have no boss, he will answer to no one, and he can't be removed except by impeachment, and yeah, that's going to happen. For those not paying attention, he seems to want to reverse abortion rights, the Endangered Species Act, protection against the government taking your property and giving it to a corporation. He thought it was funny when he worked for the Reagan Administartion to call undocumented aliens "illegal amigos." If anyone doubts whose pocket he is in, consider this: He was in secret meetings with the White House this summer about being nominated to the Supreme Court at the same time he was sitting in judgment on a case that named George W. Bush as a defendant, and he failed to disclose this or recuse himself.
All the politicians touched by Katrina are acting like, well, politicians. They are all taking full blame except for the things they can't be blamed for, which turns out to be everything. So they can't be blamed for anything. How dare they try to score points with something like this? Is there no end to their venality? Even the new FEMA guy, despite his decades of emergency management experience, has turned into a brown-nosing toady overnight, cuddling up to the President on his recent tour of the disaster.
Hospital patients and old people in a nursing home died because they weren't evacuated. Hey Doc: First, do no harm, remember?

I don't know if this is all out of my system yet. I hope it is. I want to move on. Life is precious, and so damned short. If you clicked on the "play" button at the top of this (and if your computer is capable), you've been listening to Paul Simon's "Take Me to the Mardi Gras:"

C’mon take me to the mardi gras
Where the people sing and play
Where the dancing is elite
And there’s music in the street
Both night and day

Hurry take me to the mardi gras
In the city of my dreams
You can legalize your lows
You can wear your summer clothes
In New Orleans

And I will lay my burden down
Rest my head upon that shore
And when I wear that starry crown
I won’t be wanting anymore

Take your burdens to the mardi gras
Let the music wash your soul
You can mingle in the street
You can jingle to the beat of the jelly roll

As always, my heart beats only for you, the things we have lost, and those we still seek.

Gone Five Hundred Miles When the Day is Done

2005-09-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks have been a sort of gray blur.

I've had a huge amount of work to do both at My Crummy Job and around the house, getting ready for the huge Labor Day bash. There have also been peripheral issues, a summer cold, emotional aches and pains and, of course, Hurricane Katrina.

The destruction of New Orleans is not a sharp pain for me. I have no relatives there, no roots. And although I've wanted to for years, I've never even been there. So, not a sharp pain. But the place is part of the soul of this country, the sweaty engine room of hot jazz and rock'n'roll, a mirage of dancing, laughing, singing and partying, a magical city where the laws of gravity seem not always to apply.

And when I see the mess that has become of that city, and I read and hear, day after day, of the chaos and suffering with no realistic end in sight, it just weighs me down. I can get through the days, of course, and so can the rest of us, but it feels to me as if the whole country has been harmed and saddened by this disaster. We can still laugh and sing, but everything is dampened a little by the specter of this tremendous loss. Maybe I am only imagining this, but it seems to me that everyone is at least a little down. Anyway, I know I am.

The entire city has been deserted. It will be rebuilt, of course. That's what we do. We stand in the face of adversity, and build an even bigger edifice, just to show who's boss. We'll put up new buildings, pile up higher levees, grade new roads, dedicate new schools and talk a lot about the resilience and spirit of the place and its people. And one day in the future New Orleans will be a real city again, with a genuine past. But no one today will live long enough to see this. For us, what has happened is effectively permanent. The old city will now be folded into history.

Long may its legend live.

Relief

2005-09-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

National Weather Service Warning.

This is the alert issued by the United States National Weather Service before Hurricane Katrina made landfall at the gulf coast:

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA.

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL... LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK. POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS. THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.

And yet our President and the vaunted Department of Homeland Security seem to have taken no notice. I am aware that these alerts are written in advance, so some poor meteorologist doesn't have to grapple with language as a disaster bears down. Still, the fact that they chose to release that particular pre-drafted warning suggests that the Weather Service pretty much thought Katrina was bringing hell on wheels to the coast.

I don't really think this is an issue of racial bigotry, even though it looks like that now, and I don't mind painting our radical right-wing government with that brush. But I don't think President Bush and Karl Rove sat reading that warning on Sunday night before the storm arrived, laughing about the black people who would most certainly be the hardest-hit victims, and deciding to wait several days before even starting to mobilize a relief effort.

No, I think it was a matter of stupidity, arrogance and incompetence. These guys have an agenda, and outside of their narrow ability to fool people into voting for them on fraudulent grounds, they have no vision, no leadership ability, no real compassion, no sense of history and - despite their well-proven animal cunning - no genuine intelligence.

One of the main reasons we have a federal government and give them so damn much of our money every year is that we expect them to think about the unthinkable, and plan for the eventualities that, as a population, we don't or won't plan for. I don't need them to tell me what orifices on which people I am allowed to fuck. I need them to build levees in coastal cities that are below sea level, to provide evacuation assistance for those who are unable to help themselves. But the agenda of our government is to make the world safe for corporatization, and so it seems perfectly OK to them to appoint a guy to head the Emergency Management Agency whose previous experience was as the head of the International Arabian Horse Federation. Oh, and Michael Brown was also a political crony.

When you look at television pictures of the refugees at the Astrodome, the Superdome or the New Orleans Civic Center, be aware that you are seeing the face of the brave new neocon future: If you can pay for services, you are entitled to them. If you can't, you're not. It is your failing that you don't have enough money to flee the storm, to feed your child, to rebuild your home, to dress your emotional wounds. The Market dictates that you be winnowed from the herd, because you are weak, and you upset the charts.

Luckily, we as a nation still have enough outrage left to demand action - however belated - on this matter. God help us after we have all drunk the Kool Aid.

More Pain in My Heart

2005-08-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

People seem to agree that we need pain.

We all say we are striving for happiness, but we keep doing things that keep happiness at bay. Theoretically, the commenters on my previous post say that pain is necessary so that we may feel happiness. At least the majority of the comments seemed to contain that thought. (To be fair, there are a few who seem ready to rise above this vale of tears.)

It sounds a little like the intellectual equivalent of hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, because it feels good when you stop. Implied in that old gag is the ironic reality that if you hit yourself on the head with a hammer, you will likely never feel good again, even if you do stop. May I suggest that if you go looking for trouble, you will get more than just a nice contrast to happiness?

We may think we need to have some suffering in order to know and appreciate joy, but I don't believe that any of us intentionally tries to experience misery, like, for our own good. I think we blunder into it when we think we are going to make ourselves happy.

Specifically we hook up with the wrong people. People who will hurt us, take us away from ouselves, distract us from doing what we really want to do with our lives. Sometimes we do this same foolish thing over and over, until our lives are spent, we have no more time, and we have known only this dark, self-inflicted sadness.

Maybe the world is just made like that. Maybe the possibilities that are available to any of us are distributed so that out of every thousand random options, 999 of them will lead to suffering of some sort.

Strangely, I feel fine. I'm just worried about everybody else. I guess it's my way of tasting the pain that will make my joy so much more intense.
_________________________________________
I'm buried at work, and The Corporation has found a new way to prevent me from getting anything done. I think of this as the ritual Tightening of the Screws. Every month they launch an initiative that makes no sense and causes us all to have to figure out a new way to accomplish the tasks they ostensibly require of us. I think their goal is to drive out all the real workers and replace us with fresh-faced, stupid MBA's who will play precisely by the book. This time they have really outdone themselves, and I find myself a week behind in certain critical areas, because I have generated - and been the victim of - an avalanche of emails, as I try to get the launchers of this latest initiative to get on board with the idea of taking care of the customers and, oh yeah, making money. Sorry I can't explain exactly what I'm talking about as I have given up my anonymity here and I could get fired if I get too specific, but rest assured it is Joseph Hellerian in scope.

And that's why I'm writing this sophomoric stuff, cuz my brain is fogged up. Hey, at least I'm not putting up memes and quizzes. Who is your Victorian sex doppelganger? Hmm. Maybe I'll do a quiz later.

Pain in My Heart

2005-08-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

I probably won't be able to write much this week, due to work and social pressures.

Who am I kidding? It's due to work. I owe my soul to the company store.

But I've been wondering about this: Would you like to read a novel or see a movie in which all the characters have what they want in life or are happy with what they've been given? In which everyone is confident that they are loved, and no bad guys are around to upset things? If the protagonist surmounts all his daily difficulties with a smile and any little hurt is smoothed away by the end of the scene? Would such a story hold your interest?

Mostly we don't want to read or see that story, because we want to see conflict and the testing of spirit by adversity.

But are we looking for an idyllic world in our real lives? I think we think we are, and therefore we are always surprised when we - or someone we respect - goes and does something that can only lead to conflict and drama. Maybe they tell off their boss. Maybe they don't adhere to the dress code at the country club. Maybe they pick - or choose to stay with - a bad boy/bad girl lover, one who's sure to mistreat them, and hurt them.

Should we be surprised? Why do we do these things that lead us down the road to heartache? Do we need such pain in our hearts?

Rest Room Repercussions

2005-08-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

I can take a hint.

Careful readers will recall that I broke into the empty towel and toilet paper dispensers at my office a few weeks ago and illegally refilled them. I did this because it was looking like no one else was going to do it, and they were empty, and I couldn't stand wondering how folks around here were managing to wipe their butts.

So today I found this in my mailbox at work:

So this is sort of a warning to you all, a corollary to the military axiom "Never volunteer for anything." Never step up and do anything that needs to be done, even if no one knows you did it, or you will find yourself shopping for toilet bowl cleaning supplies.

And a programming note: Tomorrow morning (Friday, August 26) on the Today Show (NBC), Joss Stone performs live. I first heard this kid when she was just fifteen years old. She sang R&B and soul like a 60-year-old black woman. At eighteen, she's still a little coltish in her stage persona, but her voice is dynamite. It looks a bit like some producer or manager behind the scenes is trying to make her into the Rhythm and Blues Britney Spears, but I don't think that will happen, since she is a bit too real. And her voice is a phenomenon. It's actually a little freaky to see and hear her. Your mind doesn't want to accept it at first. Check it out while you get ready for work.

The Deal I Made

2005-08-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

My lawyer saw me right away.

Usually he makes me sit in the waiting room for an hour, so I brought one of the twins with me, Lila, I think it was, just to occupy my time. But we had barely begun to make out when the secretary cleared her throat. Lila was all over me and I started to extricate myself, thinking maybe the secretary was offended. Or, the way my luck was going, maybe she wanted a piece of me, too.

"Mr. Eckstein will see you now, Mr. Jones."

I was definitely moving up. I told Lila to go on back down to the limo and wait for me. She started to pout, but I said she could have anything she wanted from the bar, and then she was OK, but she still kissed me like there might be no tomorrow and told me to hurry, in that cute 19-year-old girl voice of hers.

When I got into Billy's inner office he was bent over his desk, which was just a huge sheet of plate glass, looking over the paper I had mailed to him. He motioned for me to sit, but other than that he ignored me. After another minute he stopped reading and looked at me.

"Where the hell did you get this?" he demanded. No "Good morning, Larry, how've you been?"

"Guy came to my door. Like a salesman."

"And you let him in?"

"Well, yeah, why not?"

He shook his head at me. "And you say you paid nothing?"

"Right. Well, there is that stipulation at the end."

"Did the guy identify himself?"

"No. Uh, yeah. Well sort of." This was embarrassing. "He said he was the devil. Said he'd rather not tell me, but felt like I should know before I bought."

"So according to this contract, you get to have whatever you want in life," Billy looked skeptical, "for as long as you live. Wealth, power, whatever."

I brightened. "That's the way I read it, too."

Billy flicked the document at me. It slid across the glass and came to rest at my edge of the desk. "This is bullshit. It's totally unenforceable. For one thing, no one can deliver on what this... devil is promising. And even if he could, how in hell could he take your 'immortal soul,' assuming you even have one." He glanced at the paper. "I like it, though. Simple and to the point. I wish some of my goddamned boilerplate was that clear."

I was thinking of the limo, and Lila waiting in it, and her sister Liza, whom we would be joining that very evening, for dancing, drinks and insane sex, if the past month was any predictor. I was thinking of the $230 million-dollar lottery I had won, the day after I signed the contract. "Look, I said, I might have an immortal soul. And the thing is, he seems to be delivering. You say it's unenforceable?"

Billy didn't know about the huge pile of cash, or the girls who couldn't get enough of me. He looked at me for the first time during our meeting. "Jesus," he sputtered. "Are you wearing a wig?"

I felt my head, and sure enough, hair was growing on the former desert of my scalp. I gave it a little tug, just to be sure. Whoever the guy was, I was liking the deal I had made with him more and more.

My side of the bargain was completely unenforceable!

Before I had to do too much explaining, I thanked Billy and strolled out of there. I winked at his secretary. I might come back some day soon and give her a little taste of The Jones.

The smirk stayed on my face until I stepped jauntily into the empty elevator shaft.

Galaxy

2005-08-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

There is a moment - do you know this moment? - as you pass another, when, quite by accident, your eyes meet.

Maybe, just this once, for just an instant, because these moments are not really ours to keep, you see not just her eyes, but into her eyes, past the barrier that is always there, because we must keep it in place, we must protect our secret selves. Guile falls away like stained glass shattered and in that instant you can see worlds of hope and feel untold touches. And in that moment, too, you are revealed, your clothes and skin torn off, your fear, your need, your dark desire, even the smoldering beauty in your heart is exposed, for a moment.

You may not realize this has happened. You may mistake it for something else, a sudden chill that shakes you hard once. But for just that instant, sounds fade away and your heart, your breathing and everything else may seem to slow impossibly.

Then everything starts up again, the spinning, the chatter, the static and traffic.

Watch for this moment. It might be your chance to step from this world into another graceful galaxy. If you miss it, who knows if it will come around again?

Flag This

2005-08-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

So now you can flag this post as objectionable.

I have written some naughty things on this blog, although more obscene things are said at White House briefings every day, if you ask me. Come to think of it, I have written some politically objectionable things, too. At the time I posted them, you could just click "Next Blog" if you didn't like them, or whatever you might have chosen to do in the privacy of your own workplace (because you were reading it at work, weren't you?).

You could have, would have, moved on and found something to read that was more to your taste, and left me and my perverted left-wing thoughts alone. And what I have written is mild compared to some others. You know who you are.

But now when you don't like a post, the personal thoughts of some complete stranger who is doing you no harm whatsoever, you can go to the top of the Blogger page and click Flag? I'm not sure what this will actually do. Maybe a censor from Blogger will stop by and read the post, deleting the bad parts, or maybe deleting the whole thing if it crosses some line. Maybe the author will get a cease and desist email from Blogger. Maybe the post will simply be flagged as objectionable, thus warning folks before they read it. Or maybe multiple offenders will just get kicked off Blogger. Yeah, that would work.

I know this: From now on I will be looking for flagged posts, as they will no doubt be the best reading on Blogger. I hope an index of them will be created, so I can find them easier. My idea - don't try to use it or I'll tie you up in court for fifty years.

But I predict not much will actually change. There will be flag wars, of course. People will flag posts, and those authors will immediately turn around and revenge-flag the other guy's post. There will be a huge number of posts that are flagged for no reason. Blogger won't be able to keep up, and a flag will become meaningless, or a badge of quality, to be displayed with pride. An awards banquet - The Flaggies - will be held annually to honor the authors of the vilest, most anti-Christian, work.

But most of us will censor ourselves, and thus lose a little more of our freedom. There will be no one to blame, because the whole flag thing is meant only in the best way. We should all think alike, just like in the old days. Never mind that were no idyllic "old days" during which everything was better. Transgressors should be flagged and gently guided back to the Right, toward the official truth.

I am going to flag this post myself, if no one else does.

Mystery Dance

2005-08-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

What is the point of flirting on the internet?

Come to think of it, what is the point of flirting at all? I mean, when you have no intention of getting up close and making out, why wink and giggle and exchange sly innuendo? Flirting, or whatever you want to call it, is prelude to sex, isn't it? If, as I suspect, nine out of ten cases of flirting do not lead to sex because the flirter doesn't want to have sex with you, what the heck is going on?

If I like you and you flirt with me, I will want to take it to the next level, and the next, and the next, as quickly as possible. I can't help it. So in person, it's not really flirting. It's teasing.

But on the internet, it's far removed even from teasing. In most cases you are using your cute lines on somebody you don't know, who is responding from a place god knows where, and the chance that a next level even exists is down there right around - say it with me now - zero.

So flirting on the internet: Are you doing it for yourself, to show yourself that you've still got it or something? Does it somehow boost your ego? Are you demonstrating to others that you are a player? Have you just not thought it through and realized that it's going nowhere?

Why don't you tell me about the mystery dance?

Things I Have Done to My Left Hand

2005-08-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

After the merriment sparked by the previous post, I thought everybody might enjoy this unnumbered list.

Once I carried a kitten down a spiral staircase to meet a barking dog. This may seem to some of you to be the height of stupidity, and verily, it did turn out to be that. I don't know why I did this, and I soon wished that I hadn't. The kitten tensed up about halfway down, but I ignored this sign and kept going. At the bottom of the staircase, the kitten went apeshit, bit all the way through the web between my left thumb and forefinger, scratched the shit out of my arm and chest, and disappeared back up the steps. My thumb and forefinger swelled up to the size of ballpark franks, and throbbed for days. Since at the time I was a working guitar player, I had to learn how to play without those two digits. In fact, I had to learn how to do it that day. The good news was that, while playing, my left hand was elevated, so it didn't throb as much. Also, nobody much noticed the difference in my playing. But for a week or so I was able to easily make those contorted rock'n'roll faces.
Another time I was building a recording studio, and my partners did not know that I am not allowed to use power tools. I should have been spackling the sheetrock or something, but instead I was attaching a heavy surface to a counter, a task that involved drilling some holes up through the bottom of the counter. Since the counter was not yet fastened to the floor, I placed my hand on the top of it to hold it down. While I drilled up through the bottom of it. See where this is going? Yes, I put an eighth-inch carbon steel drill bit through the palm of my left hand. Not all the way (hell, I've had carving forks in deeper), but quite a few revolutions of the big Makita drill went by before my sharp reflexes kicked in and I dropped the drill, thus stopping the carnage. That scar is about three quarters of an inch from where my new scar will be, from the fork incident.
Are we having fun yet? I'll stop after this one. This involves a single-edged razor blade, a couple of car-alarm remote controls and a plastic tie of the type the riot police use when there are so many damn protesters that they run out of real handcuffs. Some stupid person had used one of these plastic ties to attach the remotes to the windshield wiper control stalk on the steering column of a car, and I had to get them off. Don't ask why - it's another story. I was crabby from lack of sleep and my first thought was to just grab them and pull until they came loose. But a tentative yank showed that the stalk would break first. Remember, this is a government-issue, handcuff-quality plastic tie, not some wimpy supermarket vegetable thing. Not only that, but it was tightened pretty much all the way down, leaving almost no slack. Those remotes were fixed to that stalk like Joan of Arc to her stake. So I did the only thing a man could do under the circumstances: I went and got a single-edged razor blade, the sharpest object known to man, a blade that could disembowel you before you even felt the bite, a device with no safety mechanisms built in. For a few seconds I sawed gingerly at the plastic tie, but the environment was cramped and the tie was thick, man, so I angrily hacked at my quarry and of course, stop reading if you're squeamish, neatly sliced most of the way through my left index finger at the first knuckle. There was no real pain, but I screamed anyway, because I was already angry and this pissed me off even more. And I have never made so much blood. It just kept spurting out. I ran and got the Universal Bandage - a piece of toilet paper - and wrapped it around my finger about thirty times. Fifteen minutes later I took it off to get back to work, and the blood was still gushing, plus the end of my finger seemed to be kind of... dangling. Somebody with a first aid kit put a real bandage on it, and I went to an emergency place. That part is a (lengthy) story in itself, so I will spare you, except to say: two hours of surgery, magnesium screws, six weeks in a hard cast, a pin that is at least three inches long, eight weeks of rehabilitation and a lifetime excuse whenever I make a mistake on the guitar.

There you go. You see how I have suffered for your many sins? How many times I have stuck metal objects into myself and spilled my blood? I only thank my father above that my right hand has been mostly spared, so that I may continue to touch myself in impure - but effective - ways.

Stigmata

2005-08-12T00:42:00.000-07:00

Even though it is not officially the crucifixion season, I have poked a hole in the palm of my left hand.

I was trying to open a bottle of olive oil. Maybe it wasn't the finest olive oil in the world, as it had a metal screw top, like a bottle of Night Train (mmmm, Night Train), but it was all I had, and the damned cap was supposed to come apart at the perforation when you turned it, and the top part becomes the removable cap while the remaining ring, having done it's job of maintaining the integrity and security of olive oil on the store shelf, is just, the, uh, remaining ring.

But the cap didn't separate from the ring. The perforation notwithstanding, cap and ring were bonded. I could turn the entire assembly, but I couldn't get the top off.

Naturally I got me a big ol' carving fork to use as a tool. The squeamish should probably skip the rest of this paragraph. The Amish, too, maybe. I jammed one tine of the big fork into the perforation and heard a satisfying sound as the two metal pieces started to separate. It felt good, so I kept poking, prodding and digging. But the cap, while it would not come off, was able to spin freely around as I dug at it, so my efforts were getting me nowhere. To stop this, while avoiding the accidental poking of the fork into my hand, I placed my hand flat on top of the cap and applied pressure to keep the cap from spinning away from my fork ministrations. I was making some headway, but in no time my hand was sweating and the cap was spinning again and I was getting frustrated with the stubborn perforation, and I wanted me some damn olive oil! So I carefully wrapped my hand around the part of the cap that I was not poking at, and held it steady. And rammed the big fork deep into the palm of my hand.

"Shit!" I yelled. But that was just anger at having slipped. A few seconds later the pain arrived. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!!!!" I yelled, as my entire body broke into a clammy sweat and blood started gushing from the hole. I thought maybe a little piece of tin from the bottle cap might have got lodged in the hole. I stuck my hand under the cold water faucet, and the pain intensified. It was like the time that hooker pinned me to the floor with her stiletto heel that night at The Palms Motel in East Hollywood, only she weighed three hundred pounds instead of... Well, that's another story.

Why, at moments like these, does my mind project ahead to scenes of driving to a hospital, filling out two thousand forms, sitting in pain in a waiting room for nine hours, being ridiculed and clucked at by nurses, having the wound "cleaned" by a drunken, sadistic doctor and then undergoing two hours of microsurgery to remove the piece of fork and insert a pig's tendon and magnesium screws into my hand, and then be sent home with Tylenol "in case I need something."? Why is that?

I don't know, but I can tell you that if I had been the Son of God and had to die for the sins of all you evil fuckers, I would have chosen lethal injection.

So anyway, it's going to be all right, even without the pig's tendon. Call me a crybaby. And maybe I didn't win absolution for all of your sins, but you know that thing you did last night, with the cat and the electrical cord? You're forgiven.

Go in peace, my children.

Jackson 5 Sing Along With Me, Say "Doo De Wop"

2005-08-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

A quick update, so no one has to worry about me.

So far, no one has noticed my maintenance work in the bathrooms at my office. I thought I was going to be in trouble for fixing the towel and toilet paper dispensers, but my meeting with The Boss turned out to be work-related (who could have guessed?). To wit, I now have approximately twice as much responsibility, spread across two locations, and no more money than ever.

As Emma Goldman has told me, I am exploited. But I'm voting Republican anyway, because I know I'm on my way to the top!

As always, my heart sways in the gentle breeze of your sweet, sweet gaze.

The Ultimate Failure

2005-08-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

August 6, 1945.

That was the first time an atomic bomb was actually used on real people. One of those people is pictured above. Incredibly, it was not the last time.

Now, three generations later, the United States and other countries are looking into new technologies to make nuclear weapons more usable on the field of battle.

To my knowledge, no one is looking into ways to make the term "field of battle" obsolete.

I Will Never, Ever Grow So Old Again

2005-08-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

I sang rock'n'roll.

I sang pretty, I sang rough. I didn't always hit the notes, but I always sold them.

I got full of myself. When I screwed up, it was always because I got outside of it, looked at myself bein' cool, and started to think how cool I was.

Little stands in the corners of smoky rooms. Outdoor festivals. Parties in Malibu backyards. Driving for days to get to the next dive, or crammed twelve across for 18 hours in an Air Siam L1011. Don't ask.

The funny thing is, I plowed through it all, showing off, trying to entertain, drinking heavily, making friends, making money, getting ripped off, getting ripped, and laughing at it all. But now there are some songs - a lot of songs, actually - that I can't sing. After more shows than I can remember, putting it out for people, I find now that I often can't even sing one good song to myself. I choke up, my voice breaks and I have to stop.

I am my main audience these days, and not a critical one. I always give myself the benefit of the doubt when I'm serenading myself. I can transpose verses, stop in the middle, change keys and start over, and there's no pressure, it's all good. I love to listen to me, and I love to play for me.

When I sang for crowds, maybe part of what I was doing was channeling. I was singing and playing great music by the great writers*, and the meaning, the beauty, the pain, the sorrow, the loss, the joy of that music flowed through me and out into those rooms, flooding them with those emotions, that people soaked up and used to their own ends. Dance, laugh, cry, think, hustle, no two alike, but everybody sharing in the flow, making what they could from it. I think there is a lot of power out there, and when you conjure it on a bandstand it needs a place to go.

When I play my guitar these days and sing alone, though, there's no place for it to go. All that power, all that meaning, all that beauty, all that pain, sorrow, loss and joy strike my soul and lodge in my heart, swelling it to the breaking point. I don't stop because I think I should, but because I physically cannot go on.

So I listen to the radio instead.

* For the record, I've worked with some great songwriters.

Saving Society, One Sheet at a Time

2005-08-03T00:20:00.000-07:00

It's the small details that tip you off when things are starting to go to hell.

You think Bernie Ebbers woke up one morning and said "I think I'll cook the books about eleven billion dollars' worth today"? That's not how it happens. Little things go wrong, and get covered up. An investment that looked like a sure thing suddenly turns into a big loser. What's wrong with hiding that loss from Wall Street? After all, everyone is making money. Who cares if some of it disappears down a hole?

But when greed and arrogance and stupidity and corruption all get in the tub with you, get ready to take the bath of your life.

Every coverup involves someone else, a "friend," an accomplice, and then another and another, and pretty soon there are so many employees spinning plates in the air, trying to keep the show going and the plates from crashing to the floor that no one is there to take care of the details, like putting toilet paper in the rest rooms.

I got a copy of the email when The Corporation fired the maintenance company for our building. It was crude, blunt, almost cruel. It listed at least a dozen locations where The Corporation was "making a change," bringing in a new janitorial service, including at the place where I work. They must have found someone who'd do it cheaper. Just like that, 20 or 30 janitors are out of work, maybe their whole company is out of business.

The corporate structure allows for one and only one goal. Like a shark that must keep swimming ahead to keep eating, The Corporation must keep improving the bottom line. All the workers want raises, the managers need to demonstrate their skills (and get raises), the officers and the board have those pesky yacht and Maserati payments to make and the stockholders want growth or else they'll take their money and go home.

So all of them - us - spend our days cranking out more product and peddling it to whomever we can. The supplier corporations, the transportation corporations, the auditing and accounting corporations, the lawyers, the doctors, the consultants, the technicians, the advertising system - print, radio, TV, direct, web - they are all trying to beat each other and sell something to my corporation, while at the same time swimming like sharks and eating everything in their paths, making more and more money every quarter. It is a magnificent sight to behold.

Until a corner starts to crumble. Until someone hires a cheaper janitorial service and sends triumphant copies of the email to everyone who could remotely care about the cost-cutting involved. Until the old janitorial service packs up it's vacuums, mops and brooms and walks out with the keys to all the towel and toilet paper dispensers. Until the new janitorial service thinks it's someone else's job to refill those dispensers. Hey, if it were their job they'd have the keys, right?

In a few days, all the dispensers were empty. I don't know what everyone was doing with their wet hands and their stinky anuses. Maybe they were bringing stuff from home and keeping it in their desks. Wet hands you can wipe on your shirt, but the other...

I really did try to find a key. Why would you lock up toilet paper in the first place? OK, of course I know. Think of it as a Socratic question. I asked everyone on the staff, and I ransacked the storeroom and the broom closets, but the keys to the dispensers were gone. I got paper towels and toilet paper out of the storeroom myself, and placed them strategically around in the restrooms, the lunchroom, in locations where they might do some good. But the rolls kept ending up in puddles of water on the lunchroom counter, or puddles of urine on the rest room floor. Our facilities were starting to look like those of a bankrupt gas station on California State Route 99, a desolate and dilapidated stretch of highway that runs north and south through the great central valley, forgotten since the interstate went through thirty years ago. In other words they looked like the fall of civilization, the crashing of plates to the floor, the beginning of the end.

My theory, and the reason I did what I did, was that if I could stop this little detail from crumbling, if I could somehow keep up the appearance that whoever was in charge had his/her lights on, then maybe the whole place wouldn't start down that road to hell.

So what I did was, I got a big screwdriver and, emulating the 13-year-old kid who'd stolen my car a few years ago, I jammed it in the keyhole of the nearest towel dispenser and punched out the lock. Then I pried the door open and loaded the dispenser. Then I went into the stall and did the same thing with the toilet paper dispenser. I made no effort to conceal my activities. I was proud of them. Sure, the towels and tissues were no longer secure, but, goddammit, they were available. Also, the doors to these dispensers were now a little bent and flappy.

I had a little free time, so I did all the rest of the rest rooms in my end of the building, and I fixed the towel dispenser in the lunchroom, too. I was, literally, on a roll.

But now I have a meeting with the General Manager, at which I will have to explain my actions. It turns out that my helpful team-playing might also be seen as vandalism and malicious mischief, or perhaps a precursor to going postal. I'm sure he'll understand if I just tell him that I was trying to avoid the collapse of civilization.

Cheap Filler

2005-07-31T23:38:00.000-07:00

I'm at the start of what promises to be a very busy week...

...what with my crummy job and writing one stinking line of my protest song every three or four days. Also, I am keeping things brief, as I stated in my previous post.

So. since you were kind enough to come here and see what I had to say, and since I have almost nothing to say, I give you this link to a very funny page of (mis)interpretations of DHS (Dep't. of Homeland Security) signage.

The picture above is a generic hott guy whom I found on Google, using the search term "hot men." Don't try that at work, folks. I really meant, after my callous and beastly previous post, to find a picture of a really hot guy, someone that I myself would find attractive if I found men attractive. But I ran out of time, and thus the quick and dirty Googling. This one's good-looking enough (perhaps a reader can let me know for sure), but he wouldn't be my choice. For one thing, I think he's laughing at me. Uproariously.

Click here for the humor, and remember my love goes with you, but not to the bathroom.

The Soul of Wit

2005-07-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

What am I thinking, writing so many words?

When I look at the previous post and realize that I have to scroll down to see it all, even I don't want to read it. This is the Age of Video. Do I think I'm writing for Posterity? Even if Blogger doesn't close up shop and delete everything we've all written, Posterity will have lost the art of reading, so who am I trying to kid?

I'm too long-winded. There are too many revisions. The prose is prolix. I think I'm on the right track using pictures all the time (thus the gratuitous cheesecake above), but when I start writing I must strive for brevity. Discipline, Jones.

So that's all for tonight, except to say that my heart burns with hot, hot love for you all.

Night Life

2005-07-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

When there is music and strong drink on a Saturday night, everyone is happy.

I'd half-forgotten the buzz that surrounds these places. The places we gather - the bars, the clubs, the cafés where we drink and mingle and meet and hustle. But there it was, from the moment I walked into the little place on Fourth Street. The cumulative voice of a hundred people, all those many lives breeding all those conversations and melding into the Big Talk that goes on in bars. At any given moment, half of it is lies, and we rarely stay with it long enough to figure out which half we are hearing. I usually believe it all.

But everyone seems happy. They're happy to be there, happy to meet you, happy to be part of the ancient ritual, happy at what could happen, eager for what might happen. I wondered if any of them knew what might happen, or if they were just hoping. Either way, the place was charged.

The woman next to me at the bar was having a hard time ordering her drink. She wanted a straight shot of tequila, but something good, not the well stuff. She didn't know the language, or the brands, had no idea what to say, and the bartender was patient but quizzical, wanting to fill the order, but eyeing her other customers, who evidently knew what they wanted. I wanted everybody to stay happy, so I ordered her a shot of Patron Reposado, neat. The bartender looked relieved and poured a double. As an afterthought I asked for water back. The Patron is mellow, but maybe not that mellow. Jones to the rescue.

The band took a break just as I arrived, a mixed blessing. I'd have to talk to them before I knew what they sounded like. On the other hand, I'd be able to let the singer know I was there to support her. She was a woman I had known for some time not as a professional musician, but as a hairdresser, a wife, a mother. I had no idea at all that she might be musical. All I knew is that she had a sweet and gentle nature, and she smiled most of the time when she wasn't laughing. In the short years I had known her a brother had died at his own hands and her baby was born with Downs Syndrome. She bore these pains in the mysterious way that some women have of growing stronger and more loving with each added burden. Then one day she said she had joined a band, and I knew I'd have to go and pretend to listen and think of some compliment for her. I hoped it wouldn't be too awful, so I could flatter her without blatantly lying.

First the drummer showed up, leaning way too far over the shoulder of Tequila Girl, taking a long time ordering a glass of water, sneaking a peak down her front. I shot him a little happy talk about his playing. Musicians always believe you when you say it sounds good. They have to. They're doing it to sound good. I found out that the band had been around, in various lineups, for at least fifteen years. So they should have been under no illusions about what they were doing and where they were going. They were already there, this little, friendly, happy place. Not a bad life, I thought. Up on the drum riser, keeping time for the comedy below, and sometimes the tragedy.

Tequila Girl took a sip and turned her bar stool around to form a triangle with us. That kept the drummer talking, maybe the half that was lies. All the places he'd worked, the people he knew, the incredible versatility of his band. He told us they could - and would - play anything, but he stumbled when trying to think of titles, eventually coming up with "Crazy," the Willie Nelson song immortalized in 1961 by Patsy Cline. This was good enough for me, and I said so. Tequila Girl agreed that it was an excellent choice.

"You wanna hear that one?" he said, as if I had anxiously requested it. "We'll play it for you, first thing."

I hadn't exactly made a formal request, but at that moment there was nothing to do but thank the man for his generosity. Since they were going to play it, I hoped Peggy would be up to the task of singing it. Before I could get up to go look for her, one of the sax players stopped by, mingling with the crowd, like all good small club bands. She was a fiftyish matron in stage threads, her fine, freckled bosom proudly preceding her. She was wearing some kind of stiff satiny evening gown in gold, looking, like all stage finery, a little tawdry in the closeups. She wanted to know how it sounded. Was it too loud? Could we hear all the instruments? I had no idea, but I murmered reassurances. She gave me a look of appraisal. Maybe I passed, maybe I didn't. We flirted without conviction for a minute before she wandered off. Before I knew it, the break was over, and I missed my chance to let Peggy know I was there for her.

I could see the drummer talking to Peggy and pointing me out at the bar, and while everyone was getting set up and tuned up, she came over to me. She was a somewhat changed Peggy. She had lost some Mommy fat since I'd last seen her, and she had a wholesome Doris Day-sexiness going on, like you'd never talk dirty to her, but if you did she'd wink and know just what you meant. She was wearing a filmy top that you couldn't really see through, but it looked like maybe you could, and white denim pants that started out tight and then loosened up a little around her thigh, ending about half way down her calves, which were wrapped in festive ribbons from her high-heeled sandals. She was surprised and happy to see a familiar face, and she couldn't believe I wanted to hear "Crazy." I continued to act as if I'd requested it - it was too late to back out now.

They didn't start with my request. They were experienced, and they knew enough not to open a set with a tearjerker. Instead, the bass player sang an upbeat old Motown hit. Peggy looked comfortable singing backup, not at all the fifth wheel some singers become when they're not the center of attention. Her body - which I had never even thought of before - was moving almost imperceptibly with the music, her feet making a miniature dance pattern that caused a sensuous swaying of the rump. She was totally tuned in and not faking, and I appreciated the way the music turned her on.

In my mental movie of this scene, the revelers have hit the dance floor, and the Motown song ends with shouts and applause. Then the lights dim and a pin spot hits Peggy, making an angelic halo out of her blonde hair. As the first bars of her song play, she introduces it and calls everyone's attention to me as the one who asked for it. I'm embarrassed only for a moment, before she begins to sing. It is a slower, jazzier version than Patsy's original, and it is astonishing. There is a rush of recognition as she sings the first word, Crazy... then spellbound silence as she continues. Her voice is a sweet contralto, a little husky, with no affectation, no phony curlycues. Crazy for feelin' so lonely... Every note is nailed, every word drenched in real emotion. I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted, and then someday you'd leave me for somebody new... She is not copying anything she's heard before, and I am amazed at the power she wields so calmly. She is in complete command by the time she gets to the bridge. Worry, why do I let myself worry? Wonderin' what in the world did I do? She is motionless, in a trance as she performs this little miracle, and each of us in the room is alone with her. I realize I am holding my breath. Crazy for tryin', crazy for cryin', and I'm crazy... for lovin'...you. For three minutes the chatter has stopped, the lies are on hold, there is no bullshit in the bar. What might have happened is happening. Breathless and in love, we erupt in applause and whistles, all the men and half the women.

I will be gone before the set is over. Peggy won't need me to tell her she "sounded good." She knows.

On the drive home I reflect on the hidden talent that exists, the myriad abilities that might never be exposed, the beauty that we may never see or hear or feel because we don't give ourselves the chance, and the unbelievably high cost of a single shot of Patron.

It's crazy.

Update, 8 AM next morning: I fixed the link to the song.

Banished, Part 2

2005-07-19T23:02:00.000-07:00

G.D. left this comment on the previous post:

> There are many brave people who just pick up and go for their dreams...is that the secret to achieve greatness??...Fearless belief in one's dreams? <

Not that I actually know anything about the mysteries of living, but yeah, that's the secret. There's more to it, though.

We all get to roll the dice in life. We are not limited by the rules as to how many times we can roll them, but we have to live with the results each time. So let's say you're Bill Gates and you and your buddy Paul purchase the rights to a computer operating system (DOS) for $10,000, because they love working with computers and software. Paul geeks around with it in his garage for a while, and you go to IBM to see if maybe they'd like to license it for their new "personal computer." Turns out they not only want to license it, but they decide they will not restrict the patents on their machine, thus allowing everybody and his Dutch uncle to build PC clones, all of which need a copy of your operating system. Millions of machines in just a few years, and you are getting thirty bucks for every one of them. Whatever you (Bill) had to do to get that initial ten grand, your roll of the dice has paid off.

But if any number of lucky things had not happened, Bill and Paul would simply be out ten thousand dollars. They would be free to try again, of course, as many times as they wanted, but each time the money would be harder to get, and they would have a little less youthful exuberance. Maybe one of their rolls would work out, and maybe not. You can see that doing what they love to do is no guarantee of success. In this case IBM had to cooperate big time.

We all get the same opportunity to roll. Some are better prepared or bankrolled by their parents, or they happen to try something that they are really good at, or they're just plain lucky. Some roll craps the first time out, and have to roll again. Some roll craps enough times that they have no heart, no money and no time left to roll again.

Often they have taken on more responsibilities in their lives. They have a car payment, rent or mortgage, maybe some kids to feed and care for. If the dice haven't been breaking for them, at some point they simply must stop thinking about whatever the fuck it is they love to do, and get a job with a steady paycheck. You know what we all think of those who don't, right? We think they are lazy, stupid, cheating bums.

Trouble is, these steady paychecks usually are not attached to dream careers. Most of the time they are not careers at all, even though you end up doing them for the rest of your life. They are just useless, boring time-wasters, functions that must be done in order for some store or restaurant or office or landfill to stay in business. Not everybody in these jobs is a dull schlump, either, so don't go jumping to that conclusion. You'll often find fine, creative folks doing crummy jobs, because they can't bring themselves to keep dreaming up new lifequests and rolling again and again, because they can no longer afford to take the chances they could when they were just starting out, because others are depending on them now, or because they simply can't put together a head of steam to make another run, or because they have been burned once too often, and they need to play it safe.

Fearless belief in your dreams is the main ingredient. It makes you willing to do anything to see them fulfilled. But you gotta be lucky with the dice, too.

Banished From the Garden

2005-07-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

I have waded through another Monday at My Crummy Job.

I can't believe my life has deteriorated to this. I don't even thank God it's Friday anymore, because on my way home I am already dreading Monday. I need like a year off to unwind, then a year to travel and have a little fun, then a year to get ready to go back. Then I'd like to work half days, from home, for twice as much $$.

I've been struggling with the Protest Song for the past few weeks, thinking this shouldn't be taking so long. I don't remember spending this much time on songwriting before, and I actually wrote a lot of songs. The quality may have been questionable, but there was no arguing with the quantity. Then I remembered: I used to sleep until ten, have breakfast and drink coffee until noon, and do music all afternoon - listening, playing, writing. Then, when it was time to go to work in the evening, guess what? I played and sang until one in the morning. My whole day was music. No wonder I wrote songs faster. And I was having a splendid time, too. These days I have to make an appointment with myself. Songwriting? Well, the whole day is out, until after 6 PM. Maybe I can squeeze you in from 7:20, after the yard work, until 7:55. I'm sorry. That's all the free time we have for you and your protest song.

Whose idea was it for me to spend my last years doing meaningless work that I actively dislike, and doing such a fine job of it, too? I am already performing the work of two-and-a-half people. And the longer I stay at My Crummy Job the more work I do, even though I could not possibly care less about any of it. Why do the jobs that pay well have to be so freakin' crummy?

And what's up with those guys who say "I love my job! I am so happy to be here, I'd do this for free!" In my experience, those guys are either the owners and CEO's, or they have high-powered rifles out in their cars. They are either getting rich off my labor, or they are nutcases planning to blow me and half my co-workers away, including themselves. I only hope their aim is true.

I made a smart remark on Emma Goldman's War On Error blog the other day, and she came back at me with a quote from a book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (I am not making this up). Go read the post, because Goldie is quite literate and persuasive and if you play your cards right she might one day make you a French pastry, and I don't mean turn you into an eclair. But here's the quote, anyway:

So much of what we ordinarily do has no value in itself, and we do it only because we have to do it, or because we expect some future benefit from it. Many people feel that the time they spend at work is essentially wasted--they are alienated from it, and the psychic energy invested in the job does nothing to strengthen their self. For quite a few people free time is also wasted. Leisure provides a relaxing respite from work, but it generally consists of passively absorbing information, without using any skills or exploring new opportunities for action. As a result life passes in a sequence of boring and anxious experiences over which a person has little control.

Right on, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi! But what can you do to fix it, once I have become addicted to the money? I have heard that you should "...do what you love. The money will follow." I did that, and the money followed someone else.

OK, sorry. I'll feel better by morning. And I'll feel great on payday. And I'll be walking on air when I finish the Protest Song and record it and post it here. Don't think you can escape this. In fact, you should all start thinking of nice things to say right now. You might want to jot down some thoughts in advance, because if you take too long when the big day arrives, it won't seem spontaneous. It's best to get your awestruck adlibs ready in advance.

The Rise of Evil, Part 2

2005-07-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

Not many disagreed with the claim in my previous post that evil always wins.

Maybe it's more obvious than I thought. Everybody knows it, and your reaction upon seeing that I have discovered it, too, is "Duh." On the other hand maybe this bleak side of Jones is too much of a downer. You don't believe me, you think that Good can triumph and you don't have time for an intervention right now.

But Theresa and Emma Goldman (whom I crudely call "Goldie") both stood up for the forces of Good. My first reaction was "What planet are they living on?" Years ago, even before I read Crime and Punishment, I had a theory about how you could have anything you wanted in life. It was so simple I couldn't believe everyone wasn't already implementing it. Here it is: Take whatever you want by force and kill all the witnesses. I had noticed that hard work and talent do not necessarily lead to success in this world, so I was thinking of ways to get stuff, in case my own hard work and talent failed.

Stealing it was one of the options. Hey, it had to be at least considered. In considering it, one of my very first thoughts was "What if I get caught, and go to prison, and end up with a boyfriend?" This line of thinking lead to my theory. Criminals get caught because witnesses tell on them, therefore you should get rid of all the witnesses. Not just bribe them or threaten them, but kill them. That way you get to keep the spoils, and there are no repercussions.

I never put my theory into practice though. I didn't want to kill anybody. I didn't even want to steal the material things I wanted. I wanted to earn my own way and have the respect of others, and as Goldie remarked (sort of) in her comment, I wanted to be able to look in the mirror without cringing at the sleazy, double-dealing murderous thief I had become.

As a result I haven't gotten rich or powerful. Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't return my calls, because she knows in advance that she doesn't want to meet me. Probably if I had followed my theory - with some modifications to account for security cameras and DNA tracing - I could have had Gwyneth in so many ways by now. But I opted for living the good life instead. Damn those Catholic schools.

But even though I am not much of a player, it seems obvious to me that if you're willing to resort to cheating, lying, stealing, threatening and actually causing physical harm to others (in other words, if you're willing to do Evil), you can come out on top in competitive situations, which is what life is. A dope like me would feel so bad about this that he would not be able to do it for long without breaking down and confessing, and then doing prison time. In my previous post I gave four simple examples of how this works, so I won't belabor this here.

I suppose what Theresa and Goldie are trying to say is something along the lines of "If we'd all play fair, carry our own weight and help each other, it would be a better world." Granted, and I'm all for it in principle. But if one guy decides to take what he wants and kill all the witnesses, he can negate a million good deeds.

And sadly, that guy is always out there.

The Rise of Evil

2005-07-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Evil always wins.

Let's say three roommates share a house. Everybody has jobs and schedules, places they have to be, people to meet, things to do. They are just trying to get over. Two of the roommates, because of their upbringing, or their moral superiority or guilt or whatever, do their share of household chores. Nothing too intense. They take out the trash, vacuum occasionally. The third roommate - the evil one - never helps. He never does the dishes or sweeps the kitchen floor. He gets peanut butter out of the refrigerator, eats what he wants and leaves the rest of it out. He spills potato chips on the sofa at night while watching reruns of Saturday Night Live, and the mess is still there in the morning, after he has risen and left the house for the day. The other roommates cover for him, because they are trying to maintain modern civilization, but he blithely goes on in his slobby ways, oblivious to the fact that his roommates are acting as his servants. Eventually, and here is where evil wins, the two roommates give up and stop taking care of their clueless brother. At this point, the house begins to smell funny, and the carpet crunches when you walk on it. Before long, all three roommates are slobs. Dates enter the house, their upper lips curl in revulsion, and people are not getting laid when they should. Pure evil, winning again.

Or consider a bully on a playground. He steals your lunch money, knocks your book bag to the ground and sometimes just bops you for the hell of it. You and the rest of the kids try to appease him, but this doesn't satisfy him. He steps up his demands, telling you to get more lunch money, or else. As you can see, evil is winning here. After a while, you decide to challenge the bully. At this point, I have to warn you: Contrary to what your Uncle Dick told you when you were little, bullies don't fold and run away crying just because you stand up to them. Sometimes they beat the shit out of you, and make you their bitch. But whatever the outcome, you and the bully have escalated the situation into open warfare. If you beat him up, perhaps you will become the bully. Or maybe he will beat you up. Either way, violence and terror are now rampant on the playground. Evil wins.

Maybe you work in a sales job, on commission plus bonuses. (In case you haven't noticed, almost all jobs can be sales jobs to some extent.) You believe in your product, and you are convinced that it is beneficial to most of your customers. You tell your clients the truth, and in some cases the truth prevents them from purchasing, because you help them to understand that the product would not suit their needs, or perhaps they cannot afford it. You lose a sale and a commission, but this is OK with you, because, after all, you are helping people, and you don't have to close every deal in order to put food on your table. But Slick Rick - the evil salesperson on your team - doesn't feel the same. He feels that every client can and should be closed, whether it is good for them or not. Because it is good for him. He leaves out any information that the customer "doesn't need to know," and sometimes obscures the long-term financial consequences of his clients' decision to buy, if that's what it takes to make a deal. Because of these and other shady tactics, he is the top producer, lives extremely well, collects most of the bonuses and sales incentives and is the darling of management. Customers are hurt, but it is possible to prove that they signed the documents of their own free will, so the attitude of the company is "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." You, on the other hand, are repeatedly called in to the manager's office and asked what's wrong, is there trouble at home, we'd really hate to lose you, but you're just not keeping up. Eventually you get fired (evil wins), or you quit in disgust (evil wins and you blame yourself) or you adopt Slick Rick's methods and start shaking down everyone you see (you lose your self-respect, more people get hurt, the integrity of the company is compromised and evil wins big time).

You see how this works?

Or you are a candidate for political office. You and your opponent strongly disagree on solutions to the challenges facing your constituents, and you vigorously present your well-researched and prepared proposals at town meetings throughout the district. Your opponent may have good ideas too, or he may not, but he realizes that the public is unconcerned about the wonkery of good government, and voters won't or can't be educated. So he attacks you personally on the ground that you smoked pot in college, or one of your aides was busted for drunk driving in 1979. Since you bailed him out, you are "soft on crime," and cannot be trusted to deal harshly with child molesters. Blindsided, you deny the charges and say that you hate those kid-rapers too, but it's too late. Your tough stance appears phony, and your supporters abandon you. Evil has won, and in the election you go down 59% to 37%. Your political career is over, unless you jump on the personal attack shitwagon in the next election.

Try to be good, folks. But watch your back, and don't expect too much from the rest of us.

An Unnumbered List

2005-07-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

That post below this one has been there long enough.

"Next Blog" visitors here will think that I am using the internet to shop for sex. Heh, heh. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am using the internet to shop for porn. But you have to admit, the person who wrote that ad (see the previous post if you must read it) was pretty clever. I thought about contacting her to tell her that I had used her ad as a blog post, and to let her know that I appreciated her writing. But then she probably would have sued me. Is plagiarism a crime? Even if I acknowledge it right in the plagiarism itself? But I guess you can be sued for things that aren't criminal. Look at O.J.Simpson: Not a criminal according to the court, but so sue-able. So if any of you were thinking about giving the ad writer a jingle, please don't mention me, OK?

I'm writing this to blot out the memory of my previous tawdry post, so I have to think of things to discuss, so as to push that other thing as far down the screen as possible. I usually don't do current events, because I have lived forever already and nothing much surprises me or outrages me, at least not enough to expose my thoughts to the world. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, there are professional writers with press credentials and lots of access, not to mention their own personal fact-checkers, who are able to do a better job of punditry than I could, so mostly I stick to trolling for comments from naked women. Some of you have been obliging in that regard, and I can't thank you enough.

Nonetheless, because I am at a creative impasse, let me try a list of stuff:

THE LONDON BOMBINGS. A lot of people hate us. I'm including the Brits and Americans in the group known as "us." There are other countries that are hated, too, sort of a coalition of the arrogant. Blowing things up and killing people you don't even know really pisses me off. Of course, it must really piss off the people who are blown up and killed. We've been doing it to whomever we want for centuries, so you've got to think they must be angry. So now they're blowing us up and killing us. Everybody in the West wants to know "Why do they hate us?" The real question is "Why did it take them so long?" Get used to it, people. This is not the kind of war you can win. In fact, the very act of engaging this type of adversary sort of guarantees that it won't end. The terrorists, who, let's face it, are fundamentalist Islamic radicals, don't have a political agenda, so we can't even surrender. We can't say, "OK, you win, we give up, you can have what you want." Because they only want to kill infidels. If we give up, they'll kill us all. So we have to take away their incentives to hate us. We have to treat the Arab and Islamic worlds with respect, instead of stealing all their stuff that isn't nailed down, installing murderous dictators in their countries and sneering at their culture and religion. It will take a couple of generations to pull something like this off, and the healing won't start until we in the U.S. dump our current crop of "leaders," who are, not coincidentally, fundamentalist Christian radicals.
TOM CRUISE. What a terrible spot this poor guy is in! He is as queer as Rock Hudson. A gay Scientologist. You know The Church wouldn't approve. You know his twenty-million-dollar-a-picture career would take a nose dive if he came out. At least you've got to hand it to him for managing to get Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz and Katie Holmes to go along with the ruse. All he needs is to be married or paired off, and for that he could use anybody, but he went out and hooked himself three world-class babes. I'm trying to imagine being repulsed by doing the nasty with any one of these women. Not working for me, but I think I can simulate the feeling (of revulsion) by imagining myself with Tom Cruise! So not my type. One night with him and I'd be going on talk shows admitting my heterosexuality. And yet he has posed as lover or husband for these hot women for years! Has he won an Academy award yet? He deserves one for this ongoing performance. Maybe after a couple of years with little Katie he will cop. According to my calculations, sometime in the next 18 months he will have accumulated more money than God, and so who cares about the career anymore? He can "get back to his roots" and do some off-Broadway theater. But whoops! Here comes The Church of Scientology. They will have to lock him in a room and cure him, or else come out themselves. I can hardly wait.
KARL ROVE. This is a non-story. But first, what kind of name is Plame? I've never known anyone with that name. It sounds made up. Is that the best the CIA can do? Making up names for their secret agents that sound made up? No wonder thay can't catch Bin Laden. Anyway, Bush said he'd fire anyone who leaked information about Valerie Plame two years ago, and now it looks like it was Karl, the guy who sort of created Bush and still pulls most of the strings. So there will be some awkward moments between George and Karl, the President and his mentor. Despite the fact that half the people in Washington already knew about Valerie Plame's job, if it can be proved that Karl did the leaking Bush will have to fire him. And the loyal opposition will grind on this interminably, so if there's any evidence it will be found, and even if there's no evidence the whole thing could bring the government to a standstill. Some of you will say "Good," and you are probably right, but Bush has to think of his legacy, such as it is, and so Karl must be canned. But wait - is this a bad thing? Certainly not for Karl. The Heritage Foundation or some other right-wing "think tank" will gladly pay Rove a million bucks to join them, and once he is free of the fetters of being a "public servant" he should be ble to make twenty grand a night in speaking fees. That's more than I make in a week. He doesn't strike me as a guy who cares if people like him, so even if he faces the public humiliation of an indictment and a trial, he'll still be able to laugh, especially when he is sentenced to six months in some low-security Martha Stewart clink (suspended, of course). Not to mention that he cannot do anything bad enough for the millions of ditto-heads in this country to lose their love for all things Rove. So this is a win-win: Joe Wilson is made an example of and Karl Rove becomes a millionaire. Because I don't have a fact-checker, I have to state here that I don't know if maybe he already is a millionaire. But either way I'm sure he won't mind getting the hell out of D.C., and getting started on his "civilian" life.
THE PROTEST SONG. You thought maybe this was going away, didn't you? Well it's not. I won't bother to link back to the relevant posts about this debacle. If you were here, you know what I'm talking about. If not, you missed a great party. I am actually working on the protest song, using as much of what you sent me as I can, without violating the Hayes Act. When it's finished I will record it and post it here, as I have previously threatened. I only wish I could somehow invade all your computers, you lazy do-nothings who have not helped me with this project, and force you to listen. It will not be pretty, but it will be done.
THE DA VINCI CODE. Yes, I am reading it. I was forced to. Someone at work bought the book and loaned it to me, against my wishes. But I have to read it now, because I refused to read Atlas Shrugged when this same woman forcibly loaned that one to me a few years ago, and so I owe her one. This book has swept America, and it has been recommended to me vigorously by so many people that I expected it to be, well, really good. I will say this: It is a classic page-turner. Every chapter ends in a cliff-hanger, and since there are three (or four) storylines, you often have to read a couple of chapters to find out the resolution of one of the cliffhangers. But while you are doing that, you discover a couple more cliffhangers, and so on. I am only half way through it, so I don't think I know enough to spoil it for anyone, so for God's sake, don't click away from here. For me the problem with the book is that the descriptions are dull and the characters are simply props. They don't feel like real people, and therefore one does not get involved much with them. I think the world likes this book a lot because it says many bad things about the Roman Catholic Church (hooray), and because it piles on a lot of little "facts" about history and language and philosophy and religion, and makes it seem as if you are learning something by reading it. This is an illusion. Still, I have to say I like all the stuff about Goddess worship, yin and yang, and the sacrament of fucking. In my big-budget blockbuster movie, which will be out late next spring, I will cast Keannu Reeves as Robert Langdon and Isabelle Huppert as Sophie Neveu. The film will flop, but I will get to meet Isabelle Huppert, and share a sacrament.
I APOLOGIZE to any of my blogging buddies whom I may have offended in private email. I didn't mean to, I was thoughtless and crude, and I beg forgiveness.

As always, my heart is filled with love for you all, but tinged with vague unease.

Personal

2005-06-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

Here's an actual personal ad that I found. I'll give you the link to it later in this post:

Hate the media? Fuck me! - w4m

Date: Mon Mar 21 21:26:55 2005

Hi. I'm a journalist. Or a reporter. Whatever word pisses you off more, I'm part of the mainstream media, the liberal media, the so-called liberal media. I am the epitome of all that is wrong with contemporary journalism.

That is why I need you to fuck me until I feel as disgraced sexually as I do professionally.

Look, I started my career with a great deal of optimism. I thought I was going to expose some hard truths. I thought I was going to tell stories that mattered to people. I thought I was going to write clever, piquant critiques of popular culture and politics that turned conventional wisdom on its head and opened new avenues of understanding and appreciating the world we live in.

Maybe I did some of that in the years I've been slaving in the salt mines. But mostly, I've capitulated to The Man.

Now, I want to capitulate to an actual man.

There's some sort of odiousness in my professional life that will irritate you no matter what your political stripe.

If you are Republican, I am indeed a liberal. There, I said it. I've left Republican voter quotes out of election stories because they were too infuriating; unless, that is, the quotes made the subject ridiculous and then I played them up. I've ignored your fucking women's clubs and your business "luncheons" (for fuck's sake, "lunch" will suffice!) and I would never deign to profile your pathetic loser hateful whitebread "Pioneers." I have a pitiful, wretched bias against asshole honkies like yourselves that manifests itself in small, ultimately meaningless ways since you never seem to realize the joke is on you.

You are arrogant, deluded and selfish assholes, and if you'd act like a supercilious pig who hates poor people — oh, excuse me, government handouts — and non-WASPs while jamming me with your arrogant cock that'd be great.

If you are a Democrat or progressive, there are reasons aplenty for you to hate me as well. I consistently toe the publisher's line; anytime there's an issue that a certain, moneyed sector of the community helps the publisher adopt as a cause of the publisher's own, I make sure all the coverage of said issue is superficial. Hey, I used to fight this, but after I nearly lost my lousy-paying shitty-benefits job because I told the truth about a community group with powerful vested interests, I decided the community would lose whether or not I caved. I don't file FOIA letters, either.

You are right about people like me, and if you could lord it over me while fucking my brains out, that might just do the trick.

If you don't hew to any political interests there's plenty to revile about my professional life which, sad to say, is the only life I seem to have. I capitalize Web site and Internet. I never use the passive voice. This is the longest thing I've written for publication in ages. I don't use a comma after the terminal "and" in a series. I rely on the press releases of boring and often insane community groups to develop stories around that you don't give a shit about, and I can't blame you for that!

I'm better-looking than your average reporter — God knows it's goblins and gnomes all over the newsrooms of the world — so that isn't saying much. Mostly, I expect my half-assed way of getting my shit pulled together to fuel your aggressive, angry libido.

I am everything that is wrong with the media, incarnated in human form. If you've ever said "Fuck the media," this is your chance.

OK, so here are my questions:

Smart, sexy broad or desperate skank?
Serious reaching out or amusing hoax?
Guys - Are you going to answer the ad? (The link is below.)
Girls - Should I answer the ad?
Is there any chance that liberals/progressives/Democrats will hate her enough to give her true satisfaction?
Or will she hear only from Republicans?
Who knows what FOIA means?
Great opportunity or sad commentary on modern life?

Because you won't believe that this is a real personal ad that I found - I mean stumbled across while researching oil reserves in Colorado - on the internet, you can go to the actual post and read it yourself by clicking here. If any of you decide to respond, I'll expect a full report.

Tappin' It Out

2005-06-28T23:33:00.000-07:00

I love this blogging thing! It's almost exactly like writing.

If I were a real writer, I mean like a professional writer, a guy who actually got paid for, you know, writing, I think it would be a lot like this. You sit down at the computer - I'd use a computer because that whole typewriter thing, while it looks cool in the movies, you have to keep ripping out the paper with the crappy false starts on it and crumpling it up and throwing it away in disgust, missing the waste basket at least half the time, plus you have to use whiteout. Have you ever used whiteout? As The Oldest Blogger, it's possible that I have more experience with whiteout than all of you combined. Oh, sure, it's got a kick. I've seen the antelope-sized jackrabbits galloping alongside my car on the freeway. But it will give you a righteous headache, too, and it takes like five years to develop enough skill to use it and not make a big, soft lump of whiteout on your page, a wet mass of paste that will not dry anytime soon. You might as well rip that page out and toss it at the waste basket, because you will never be able to type over that goo-covered mistake. Plus, the high is not worth the headache.

So I'd use a computer.

Where was I? I'd sit down at the computer and start my professional writing. I'd have a beginning, a middle and an end, every time I sat down. Or at least I'd want to. And here's another way that blogging is like writing: Writer's block. Only you don't get writer's block. That's for the writers. What you get is Blogger's Block. You think you're going to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but maybe you don't have an end, or a middle. Maybe right now you're like me, and you don't have shit.

Don't worry! This is Blogger's Block. It's not a bad thing. It is the proof that you're a blogger! If the blogosphere gives you lemons - say it with me now - you make lemon-fucking-ade!

Welcome to Blogger's Block. That extremely brief moment when you have nothing to say. Work through it. Chances are, your "readers" won't even notice if you fill the screen with meaningless nonsense. I know that when I'm a reader, all my bloggin' buddies get the full benefit of all my doubts. Was that a stupid, thoughtless remark? Of course not. Facts a little, ah, wrong? Nah - just a matter of interpretation. Was that a conclusion she just jumped to? Couldn't be - she's too smart. See how that works? Blog through your block, and you can't go wrong.

Hey, and how about readers? Writers have readers. Well, so do bloggers. Bloggers have technical ways to check up on their readers, too, find out if they are being loyal. So I guess that's a little different than it would be for a writer. A writer would go to bookstores and read his book out loud to a bunch of readers, and then he'd take his pick of the nubile coeds who had attended his reading. Bloggers don't get out as much, but they do have stats. And they make up for being just a little withdrawn at times by being in the forefront of a new medium. Bloggers are in the vanguard, so they're cool, and you can take that to the bank.

I wish I had a gray wool houndstooth sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. That would be something a writer would have. But that's another post.

My Stick-On Family

2005-06-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

If I were a loving husband and doting father of two I would certainly have these things on the back window of my SUV:

That would be me there with the bowtie, beaming and waving at the world behind my big V8 Expedition/Navigator/Tahoe/Armada. Doing a little jig, too, because I am so happy with my little stick-on family and my 420 cubic inch engine.

Next to me is Mrs. Jones, in a demure calf-length skirt. Mrs. Jones is happy, too, because she just took a whole handful of Prozac. She's got those telltale Prozac eyebrows, doesn't she? But, oh-oh, what's this? Mrs. Jones has no tits at all! No stomach or intestines, heart or lungs, either. Well, I guess that's how the little vixen keeps her weight down. Good for you, Mrs. Jones!

Then there are the kids. Little Madison with her polka dot skirt and that adorable crooked smile. She's got her mother's tits, don't you think? Somebody's got 'em, that's for sure!

And my boy Justin, the apple of my eye, always scaring the pigeons, that dickens. His mother picked that name. I wanted to name him Ken, after Kenny G. "K-Man!" I'd say to him, "whassup?" But Mrs. Jones said it would always remind her of Kenneth Starr. I was happy to let her give him a fairy name. Because I am the loving stick-husband and she gives me stick sex if I don't ever contradict her. Secretly, though, I call him Ken.

But I would never put these guys on the back window of the big ol' rockin' SUV:

Because if a stalker followed me home, or some hoodlums intent on committing a home invasion, I would want them to think that it was just me and Mrs. Jones and our beautiful children. Then, after they tied us all up (but before they fooled around with little Maddy, bless her heart), out would come good old Rex and Fluffy, snarling and hissing, and rip those home invaders some new butt-holes!

That's the way I think, because I am Stick Man, and I take care of my stick family.

Angel of Death

2005-06-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

Molly the Cat was sitting motionless on the back stoop.

She's the first cat I've ever had, having grown up more of a dog person, so she is teaching me all about cats. One of the things I've learned is that cats often sit motionless for long periods of time. When they are not sleeping, I think they are trying to demonstrate what they might look like stuffed. Most of the time, they're sleeping.

But I am standing quietly behind her, in the kitchen, watching her through the screen door, when I detect a slight variation in her stance. Her body tenses slightly, her ears swivel toward a certain point in the backyard and her feet gather up under her as she slowly lowers herself into a crouch. Her back legs tense and flex a few times. I am about to learn something new, firsthand...

I know a girl, her name is Kristin. She'll never see this, so I am using her real name. She is a beautiful child, just eighteen years old, or maybe seventeen, a fresh, vibrant new bloom. She is my niece's best friend, has been for a decade. They are rarely apart. They might as well be sisters, for all the sleepovers they have had at each others' homes. They have studied together, played together, caroused around Southern California together, and I have no doubt have drunk together and started to learn about boys together. Last week, just last week, they graduated from high school together. They rigged it so they could walk together in the procession, and then they partied together until dawn.

As long as I have known Kristin, she has lived alone with her mother, in an apartment, just the two of them. I talked to her mom twice. Once on the phone when I took the girls to Disneyland (naturally I had to be checked out), and once when I found an unrecognized phone number programmed into my cell phone. It was hers, and we spoke for a minute, not knowing each other. She figured out who I was first, before I could solve the puzzle, so I thought she must be pretty smart.

I missed the graduation ceremony myself, and I still had not met Kristin's mom when I made a little photo slide show of the affair, using what was on the memory card of someone's digital camera. One shot that I included was of the two graduates just after the ceremony, posing in their caps and gowns, holding their bouquets and flanked by their two proud mothers. Smiles of pride, joy, relief and mischief. Just a week ago.

Kristin's mom was a waitress, so it can't have been easy to get the kid through high school, and who knows what might come next? We sometimes think we know, but we don't, really. Last night, coming home from work sometime after midnight, her car was struck by another, and she was killed.

She was two blocks from the apartment, making the last left turn. The other car rammed hers broadside and pushed it at least a hundred feet down the street, into a tree, where it stopped and caught fire. It must have been all over in a matter of seconds, and the other driver fled.

There are some older sisters, but they have been out of the nest for a long time. So Kristin won't be completely alone. Just more alone than she has ever been. I try to think how I would handle this myself, at her age, and my mind just won't look at it. We think we know, but we don't, really.

It happens so fast I hardly believe it. Molly the Cat rockets off the back stoop, and in about a second she is at the cinderblock wall at the distant end of the yard, 60 feet away. She looks into the bougainvillea there for another second, then stands on her hind legs and bats something from a branch to the ground, floomp. There is the momentary peeping and shrieking of the baby mockingbird, and then Molly the Cat is running, bird in her mouth, into my kitchen. In those ten seconds, she has brought mindless, meaningless, inexplicable death, but she has done nothing wrong, nothing I can punish her for, and she is confused at my raised voice.

We think we know, but we don't, really.

Protest, Schmrotest

2005-06-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

One day I will hit upon a traffic-generating scam that will make this blog the Most Popular Destination on the Web.

The revision99 Protest Song UnContest was not it, however. I am reviewing the entries this evening, and I have a few thoughts:

Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who wrote lyrics and proposed song ideas. My creative days are long in the past, so I really need this stuff if I am going to maintain any sort of illusion of vitality.
I will not name names at this time, because then everyone will know what a flop the UnContest was. Besides, you know who you are. If any of you "win," - and this is a big if - I will request permission to identify you in this blog.
Apparently, not many of you are very angry, and those who are, aren't really angry, just a little annoyed. You have to stoke up a pretty heavy head of steam to actually want to write a protest song (or, apparently, even to say a protest sentence), and I guess I just didn't piss off enough of you, enough.
I thought my list of things to be angry about would get your creative juices flowing, and just in case, my reprint of the lyrics to "Eve of Destruction" should have made it obvious that there would be no reason for embarrassment, no matter what you wrote. But most of you who said anything, said you "didn't know how" to write song lyrics, or that you "suck at" writing song lyrics. You should listen to "Achy Breaky Heart" a few times.

But, whatever. I warned you what the punishment would be if you didn't cooperate on this: I will write a protest song myself. God knows I am angry enough. I will steal what I can from the songs and ideas you have sent me, mix in a little tambourine and acoustic guitar, and try to put them together into a rousing anthem for the New Revolution. When it's finished I will record it and post it for you all to hear. Then you'll be sorry. Get your picket signs ready.

If you're here for the first time, details about the UnContest (which is over unless you want to enter now) can be found here and here.

Pomp, Circumstance and Sleep Deprivation

2005-06-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

Jesus X. Fucking Christ in a gypsy cab, I am tired tonight.

Last week I drove to The University of California at Santa Cruz for the graduation ceremony of my goddaughter. If you've only heard about godfathers in reference to Mafia bosses, be advised that a godparent is supposed to be responsible for the spiritual upbringing of the child if something happens to the bioparents. Due to a warp in the time-space continuum, I was picked to be a godfather twenty-four years ago. Luckily, nothing happened to the girl's parents, or else by now she would probably be a Hong Kong call girl. Regular readers will know that I am a deeply spiritual person, but during her formative years I was, shall we say, otherwise occupied.

The girl grew up to be a pretty good young woman, but I was never convinced that she would graduate from college. Frankly, I didn't think she wanted to. A few years after I myself finished college I had a lot of friends who were still attending. Most of them never accomplished enough to trigger a graduation ceremony, and some of them are taking classes to this day, with no graduation in sight.

I thought that would be the path my goddaughter would take. I mean, when she traveled to Spain to study, it was only a matter of weeks before she moved out of the safe boarding house arranged by the university and into god knows what dive. Then she stopped going to classes, and instead joined an itinerant street theater troupe. When I got the news that she had broken her arm falling off the table she was dancing on in a Madrid bar, I was pretty sure I'd never be attending a graduation, and, spiritual guru that I am, I became one with that.

When she returned to the U.S. and enrolled at Santa Cruz, the Hippie Campus, I still felt I had nothing to worry about. I mean, the school mascot is the banana slug. Need I say more?

But life has its twists and turns, and eventually she found a calling and not only earned a degree, but with honors, and a job offer to boot. And the whole procedure took less than seven years, which is less time than my friend Mike took to pass English 1A. (Note: I am jealous, because I am still looking for my first job offer related in any way to my major, which was Semantics.).

Since it costs the same to fly to Santa Cruz from L.A. as it does to charter a jet to Antarctica, I decided to drive up there for the big weekend. So I had a nine-hour drive the Friday before last, including three hours of traffic jams in the middle of fucking nowhere, which is what central California looks like. I don't know why there would be traffic jams when we were so far away from anything that we could see the curvature of the earth, but there you go.

To add to the fun, all the rooms in Santa Cruz and environs were booked, so I had to be smuggled into someone else's motel room for the weekend. The last time this kind of pajama party/sleepover was actually fun was Cub Scouts. But I was 35 then, and a lot of things were more fun in those days.

The town was alive with freethinking and strong coffee, and I got very little sleep, except during the graduation ceremony itself. Governor Schwarznegger, our answer to Jesse Ventura, did not speak at this affair, which took place in an open meadow, so the quiet drone of the various valedictorians and faculty members combined with the hot sun and a lazy breeze to create the perfect nap time, and I nearly fell off my folding chair three times.

Following the ceremony there was a forced march several miles up a steep hill to some sort of quad, where we attended a reception, which, I think, was mainly a chance for our rather large group to get separated from one another over and over as we kept telling ourselves that we were leaving as soon as Uncle Jack (or cousin Mildred) came out of the bathroom, or got back from the food concession, or had their picture taken in one previously untried permutation of relatives, graduate and friends.

When we finally overcame this inertia and got the hell out of there, we had to wait for a shuttle bus to take us back to the parking structure concealed some miles away in the redwoods. When the bus arrived, there were too many people at the bus stop, but we all got on anyway, and the little tram got as crowded as a municipal bus in Baja. I must compliment the manners of the students who were on that tram, however. One of them actually stood to let me have his seat, although it is possible that he was influenced by my Crazy-Eyed Killer stare. Still, he got out of my way, and that's what counts.

Then there was a drive to another small town nearby, a dinner at an Italian restaurant with heavily accented waiters (no Mafia bosses, though), several toasts, a session of gift-opening, a great deal of earnest after-dinner conversation and a drive back to Santa Cruz where I was re-smuggled into the room for a refreshing four hours of sleep before getting back on the road for Southern California.

You'd think that sitting in a comfortable car seat for eight hours would be easy and restful, but there is nothing like hurtling down a freeway in a vibrating steel box at ninety miles per hour, a hideous death only seconds away if you lose your concentration at any time. There is nothing like that to get you all stressed out and fatigued, which is what I was by the time I got home on Sunday night (the Sunday before last).

It was a wonderful weekend with great sights, the electric buzz of young brains and a pretty coed who wanted to discuss Linguistics with me, and I can have no complaints, but jeez, the driving and the eating and the speeches and the not sleeping, well, it wore me out. And I was only halfway through the graduation festivities. The following week (this past week) I had another graduation, this one right here in my town, with me acting as the host for out-of-towners and throwing a party for the graduate and her rowdy teenage homies.

But I see that I have been typing so long now that probably no one is still reading, so I will just say that I have survived two graduations in a row, I am thoroughly burned out, and I am thankful that I have no dad and I am not myself a dad, or else I would have had a Father's Day thing added on. Luckily I started back to work today, so I will be getting some much-needed rest there.

As always, my heart overflows with tender joy and bittersweet affection.

Remember, tomorrow is the first day of Summer, so the deadline for the revision99 Protest Song UnContest looms. You still have time to submit lyrics and song ideas to vent your rage against The Establishment (or whatever pisses you off). Details can be found here and here.

Clocking Out

2005-06-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

Au revoir, my friends.

Last week I went away to attend a graduation, and I was completely disconnected from the internet for almost four days. I got so far behind in the daily serial that is my bloggin' buddies' lives that I felt guilty. Every blog I visited had three or four (or five) posts that I had not read. I was not just disconnected from the internet. I felt like I had been disconnected from life itself.

I tried to catch up, but I am hopelessly behind. Whatever was discussed is gone forever, and I am destined always to be out of the loop when references are made to the occurences of that long weekend. Oh, wait. I've been out of the loop since Reagan was shot, anyway, so what's new?

Now, the very next weekend, I have another graduation. This one is right here in my town, and the wrap party is right here in my house. Due to the close family connection of this graduate (my niece), many relatives are descending on my town, and I will be entertaining them, probably every second from Friday early in the morning (who flies at 6:30 AM? My sisters.) until late Sunday evening. My only plans for entertaining all these people is a backyard party and barbecue on Saturday. Other than that all I've got is getting ready for the party, and cleaning up after the party.

The party might not be so bad, because my niece may have hot teenage girlfriends, and I have made it clear that there will be no underage drinking at my home. So I'm assuming they will be loaded to the gills when they get here, and you never know what those crazy kids will do.

So again I will be out of the blogging loop, in the dark, incommunicado. Naturally, I'll be right here close to my computer much of the time, so I might be able to sneak in and check some blogs. But I have a large, demanding family, and I'm not in any way ready to throw a party for hot teenage girls (OK, and boys), so with all the last-minute running around I will be doing I anticipate that I will be offline again for the next few frantic days.

I'm guessing this is going to be mildly disappointing to about eight people. I don't seem to have as many readers as Pops, or MPH, or Theresa, and they (you) don't seem to be as fiercely loyal. But they make up for that with their intense, uh, their, ah, occasional mild curiosity, or something. Maybe. I'm not jealous or anything. All those people who don't visit me here, well, it's their loss. This really is one of the only places on the internet where "to, two, too, there, their and they're" are never misused, and all apostrophes are placed correctly. Oh. Maybe that's why no one visits me here.

Well, I just thought I should let you know. About my upcoming busy weekend and all. Busy, busy, busy.

Mulholland Dancer

2005-06-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

Will you dance for me, if I play the music just right for you?

I must have forgotten how you liked it, the music. Before I saw you, before you had me, it must have been nearly perfect, else how could you have been drawn to it? That summer I made the patterns, and the rhythms. It was a trance, those hot nights, and I was in it.

You danced for me then. How did you do that thing, that look where you are shy and suggestive at the same time, innocent and nasty? All the gyrations and shimmies, the little halter, the bare brown skin, but it was that look that took me. Later you said you were a belly dancer, and maybe you were, but you would never give me a private show. You said it was too nasty. Only tramps do that, or a woman for her husband. It was the only thing you wouldn't do, and it became the only thing I wanted.

That first night you gave me your phone number, and I had it in my pocket for months, and I still can't say why I didn't call. I waited until it was too late, the moment was long past, the scribbled note a dead leaf in my jacket pocket, flaked and crumbled. I could squint and read the number, but you were gone from me, and, to be honest, I was afraid, the way I am when it matters.

You wouldn't remember me. You'd found a boyfriend. You didn't want me to call. The number you gave me was fake, a way of getting rid of me.

How many times in these reminiscences can I get away with saying I was young and stupid? I think I'm pretty smart, but when did that begin? Surely sometime after you happened, precious dancer. I was young, but you were younger, and wiser. The second time I saw you dancing, I couldn't believe my luck. But it wasn't luck at all, was it, sweetheart? You simply came back and got me. Sent your girlfriend home with the car and told me I had to drive you, somewhere way the hell down Mulholland Highway, out into the Valley.

I made the music. You made the magic. I can see your storm of black hair flying as you spun, later spreading on the sheet. It wasn't rock'n'roll sex, there was no cocaine or absinthe, no leather. You were kind of new at it, but you gave yourself so sweetly that I almost cried, and you really did cry, and we tried it many times that night, and many nights that summer.

The whole thing collapsed of course. My fault. Young and stupid. Your mother may have been right: if you pursue, you are a tramp. A piece of ass. Sorry, babe. I am so, so sorry.

I'd give anything if you would dance for me, one last time.

Flat Up Against the Wall, 2005

2005-06-15T00:43:00.000-07:00

I am having a hard time getting back in the groove.

I guess I don't want to get back in the stinking groove. I had a great weekend, with lots of high-speed driving on the California coast, more intellectual stimulation than I have experienced in years, lemon sorbet served inside a hollowed-out lemon - I was even smuggled into a hotel room without registering, and I stayed there for three days, and got away with it. Fuck The Man! (No, girls, I am not The Man.)

I was completely disconnected from the internet. I couldn't check my email or read any blogs or post anything. Oh, I could have found an internet cafe in the university town I was in, but I was busy having fun. So imagine my surprise when I return to find that most of my otherwise genius readers don't think they can write song lyrics! What the fuck?

When the Protest Song idea first occured to me, it was because I thought everyone was mad as hell and not willing to take it any more. MPH complained that there weren't any good, rollicking countercultural change-the-world type of songs for his generation (whichever one that is) to rally 'round, and from the comments he got, I thought writing a protest song for the 21st century was an explosion ready to happen. Thus The revision99 Protest Song UnContest.

But will you look at yourselves?

"...i'm not sure i'm talented enough to put it into song..." (Alex)
"...Damn, this blog has a lot of homework..." (Digitalicat)
"...I'm not promising anything..." (Adreeyin)
"...This is too much work..." (Steph)
"...I suck at writing lyrics..." (L of Random_Speak)

What a bunch of weak sisters! You are writers, people! Take a peek at this example of "songwriting" from the 1960's, and tell me you are intimidated:

The Eve of Destruction, by P.F. Sloane

The eastern world, it is explodin’.
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy
It’s bound to scare you boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist  the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Is anyone intimidated by this drivel? There should be a protest song protesting this song!! Yet - and you'll have to trust me on this, because as The Oldest Blogger I know this to be true - that stupid song was played on the radio all over this country every hour, 24 hours a day for three months during 1965.

Really, how much effort would it take to scribble something that bad?

OK, you're thinking "Hey, I've got a life, and my own blog. Why should I contribute lyrics that will only make Larry Jones rich and famous?" Fair enough. Here are the reasons:

I deserve wealth and fame.
I need a faster car.
It will be easy.
It will be fun.
You can make a difference!
You can leave a lasting legacy.

As an added inducement, I promise not to:

...subject you to ridicule
...ridicule you myself (as you know, I love you all)
...reveal your identity (if you don't want me to)

So you can't possibly lose. Everybody knows the music business is a pushover. Now you have a willing collaborator, and hey, let's face it: In the end I will be doing most of the work, and you will be sitting back and taking the credit.

What are you waiting for? Don't answer that! Here's even more good news! You don't have to write a whole song! That's right, just send me your 21st Century Protest Song idea, in the form of a simple couplet or singable chorus, and I will somehow massage it into a song that's guaranteed to be as good as The Eve of Destruction!

The first day of Summer is the deadline, so there's just one more week to do this. Remember, there are no losers in The revision99 Protest Song UnContest. Only people who didn't win. Member FDIC. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Details at this earlier post.

Getting Back

2005-06-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

A Few Items:

I was out of town since Thursday, attending the college graduation of someone I have known since the day of her birth. I was cut off from all computers, so I haven't written anything or read anything you may have written.
I discovered that I really miss being on a college campus. I have almost no daily intellectual stimulation at my crummy job, whereas on campus, there's tons of that.
College kids today have little to no fashion sense, at least in Santa Cruz, California.
If you think I am going to stop promoting the Protest Song UnContest, you're wrong. I'm just too tired to do it tonight. But let me assure you the entries I have so far are stunning. The rest of you have a little more than a week to deadline. Don't put it off, people. The punishment will be a protest song by me.
As always, my weary heart overflows with love and bittersweet joy.

Up Against the Wall, 2005

2005-06-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

Announcing the revision99
Protest Song UnContest.

OK, first go and read this post at the blog referred to by its author as "The blog lovingly referred to as 'Heightened Thoughts.'" The guy's all fired up because there ain't enough modern revolutionary music, given that we live in times that are approximately as shitty and hopeless as the 1960's and '70's, when there were all kinds of protest songs that caused what we now wistfully remember as "the Revolution."

Completely aside from the fact that there really was no revolution in this country after 1776, and discounting the truth that there is a fairly hefty library of current music protesting the state we find ourselves in, I'll play along for a while.

Hey, kids, let's put on a show!

Well, OK, let's not put on a show. But how about if we write a song? Here's is the comment, somewhat abridged, that I left in the comment section of Heightened Thoughts:

OK, all you angry people. Here's a challenge, for you and for me: Write a protest song for the 21st century, and I will put it to music and record it and post it. (I'm talking about lyrics here. If you can play and sing, do this yourself.)

Post your lyrics on your blog (make sure you notify me), or MPH's comment section (again, you'll have to notify me), or email me. Look at my profile to get my email address.

Your song can be a joke, or it can be serious, and you retain all rights to the words no matter what I do with them.
Of course you get full credit for your contribution whenever and wherever the song appears.
If more than one of you tries this, I get to pick which one to record.
If you want to give me a melody, try Audioblogger, or post something on some server somewhere and send me the link.

I am a child of the sixties, a blast from your past, and I am not only angry, I am drug-addled. I warn you: If no one sends me anything or posts anything, I will do this myself. We don't want that, do we?

So, what is pissing you off about the status quo?

The religious right?
The lap-dog media?
The neocon hawks in D.C.?
Tom Delay?
Right-wing AM radio?
The rich getting richer?
Environmental destruction?
Governmental invasion of privacy and disregard for human rights?
Anti-stem cell research bullshit?
Abrogation of international treaties?
Institutional homophobia?
Corporate scandals?
Is there more???? Of course there's more!!
Stolen elections?
Globalization?
Voter apathy?
Skinheads?
Longhairs?
Job outsourcing?
Drug laws?
Big fat smug politicians with lifetime paychecks and excellent health benefits fucking with your meager Social Security plan?
The pumps don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles?

Write it down!!

Here's your chance to express yourself. It would be good if it has verses and a memorable chorus that we can sing over and over and over and over and over and over while we are marching on Washington. Rhyming is welcome, but optional. Naturally there has to be an unreasonable and arbitrary cutoff date for song submissions...

...So let's say you have to send your song BEFORE SUMMER STARTS. That will be sometime on June 21.

OK? Bring it.

Oh, before I forget. Get over to Kristi's blog if you want to read about hot pickup truck sex with virgin schoolteachers.

Maybe Someday

2005-06-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

I need a break.

My previous post, Another Memorial, got me down and I still feel like shit. Many of the truths I believe are crappy, but I know that the world sux and I put it out of my mind and laugh and live my life. But after writing something like that I can't forget it easily.

Making music has always been good therapy for me, so this past week I fired up my home recording system, which is basically just a PC with some special software on it, and recorded a song, just to get my mind free. I started from scratch, and I played and sang all the parts, except for the drums, which I sequenced. Extremely careful readers will know that this is a song I wrote a long time ago. I just thought it would be easier to (re)learn the recording process if I already knew the song.

It's just an experiment, folks, but I have posted the project if you'd like to hear it. Just click on one of the buttons below. Both files are MP3. The low-resolution one is 2 megabytes, and the high-resolution version is 4 megabytes. Either of them will take a while if you're on a slow connection. Sorry, I just can't stand to make the sound any worse by compressing it more.

Oh, yeah: The song is called Maybe Someday. Turns out it was good therapy, and it made me feel better.

Another Memorial

2005-05-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

We are powerful and brave.

We are angry, afraid and greedy. We always want more than we have. We are ingenious.

We have invented so many superb ways to show our strength, to assuage our fear, to give vent to our anger, to take what we want.

We will hit you with rocks. We will maim you with our sword and our battleaxe. We will blow holes in your soft flesh with our blunderbus, our musket, our carbine, our pistol, our machine gun, and the life will drain from your mortal body, while we take what we want from you, your family, your home.

We will blow up your buildings, your public places, your railroad tracks, your factories, your electrical generating facilities, your airports, your roads, the very houses you dwell in.

We will organize ourselves into huge armies, and these armies will be the grandest achievements, hundreds of thousands of us in uniforms, training, planning, arming. We will tell ourselves, and you, that we only want to protect ourselves. But in our fear, our anger, our greed and our hatred, we will move to dominate you, to subjugate you, to take your treasures.

Failing that, we will kill you. We will take you in our hands and we will blacken your mind, stop your heart, wring the blood out of you, and all your kind. We will scorch the earth you live on. It is within our power. It is within our hearts.

No one of us can remember when this started. We have always done this, even before we invented our excellent weapons. Every day we teach our children to be ready for this. The marching, the taking, the killing. We do this to our children.

There is no place on earth left to hide.

This is my memorial to all of them who died. To all who killed. To all who are dying and killing even right now, as I think these thoughts. I weep for you and myself, and all who will come after us to continue the carnage. Bring glory on us. Bring your wrath and your fire. Bring peace through devastation. Bring it to every town, to every street, to every home, and we shall have peace, and our heroes at last may rest.
**************************************************************
Joe Frank has made an eloquent audio statement on this subject.
You can listen to it by clicking here.

Pigs and Pussies (Bang Bang, Part 3)

2005-05-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

Shot down again.

My post Tuesday in which I imagined myself a misunderstood inner city almost-dropout stud muffin and Michelle Pfeiffer my earnest, misguided but highly desirable schoolmistress (yes, Mistress!) received some unexpected comments.

In the totally imaginary persona that I assumed, I may have said some things that I myself in real life don't actually believe. The short version would be along the lines of Oh, my God, Miss Pfeiffer, please don't quit teaching and if you wear that little red dress you wore in The Fabulous Baker Boys I'll do anything you ask, even memorize poetry that may or may not have been written by homosexuals. Or in other words, as far-fetched as it is, as remote the possibility, what I think when I look at Miss Pfeiffer is Hooeey, I want to roll around and get dirty with that!! Something like that. Doesn't matter who she is, or that I have like, zero chance of even touching the hem of her granny gown, let alone unzipping her little red party dress.

The comments were split between...

Yowzah! This is a prime cut, wink wink, and
Memorizing poetry won't work, you ignorant schlump.

The guys generally saw where I was going (or where I was coming from - I really cannot talk Street), and wanted to go there with me, damn the torpedoes. The women (I will never call you girls, because I respect you too much) said, with one exception* that my shallow approach would not work. I'm not sure if they meant it wouldn't work on them, or it wouldn't work with Miss Pfeiffer, or it just plain wouldn't work with any woman, period. But the suggestion arose more than once that I knew it wouldn't work, or at least I should have known.

So there it is again: All men are pigs, we only want one thing, we completely fail to understand women, and the one thing we want will be withheld from us because of our lack of understanding.

Are there exceptions? Sure, the ethereal Shelley's and Byron's who write the damned sensitive poems in the first place, and their spiritual descendants, the fevered fellows in the frayed turtlenecks who drink coffee in the Student Union (they smoked in my day, but I'm guessing that's over now) and seem to dwell in that angst-ridden fantasy land where the higher sensibilities rule and Big Drama is the order of the day.

And I'm not even sure about those guys. They might be pigs, too. I know they have at least some of the qualifications.

So what is the answer to this Big Question? We have to get together, boys and girls. We have a programmed need for each other. We actually want to be in love with each other, I think. But, perhaps due to God's grand sense of humor, the boys must forever keep guessing at the secret password, and the girls keep changing it (I can say girls here because I said boys, OK?) while wistfully seeking a man who understands, who is sensitive but still very strong, rich but not obsessed, sexual but only with them, rugged but soft... well, I'm not making a Great Expectations video here, but you know what I mean.

As always, my heart overflows with confusion and love.

* But Steph has made sort of a career of charmingly missing the point. She does it so well that she makes me think I've missed the point. Wait a minute. I have missed it, haven't I?

Dangerous Mind

2005-05-24T00:15:00.000-07:00

If I were an inner city teen, I'd for sure be in a bad street gang.

The Blips or The Cruds, whatever, because that's the only way you can survive on the street, you see what I'm saying? I'd shave my head and wear some baggy clothes, too, with a nine in my pants and a knife in my sock, just to be safe. If they put metal detectors in school, well, then I would just stop going to school, because school is for losers, and I'd rather hang with my boyz anyway.

I'd be one bad dude. Fuck with me, man, look out.

But if my teacher were Michelle Pfeiffer, I'd be good to her. No backtalk, no lip. I'd smack down any of the other guys in the class who gave her a hard time, too. She'd just be a good, honest chick tryin' to make the world a better place for guys like me. Oh, sure, she'd be hopelessly wrong about her chances. I mean, homies don't turn nobody in to the cops, man. You're marked for death, no matter how stupid the reason, you go out like a man, man.

But when you have those soft pink lips like Miss Pfeiffer, it makes dudes like me want to study Shakespeare, man. You see what I'm saying? And when you're all sincere like she is in her intentions of educating me so I can do something positive with my life, like get a good job in the United States Army or even MacDonald's, well, I just wouldn't be able to resist her, you know what I'm talking about?

Shit. You know what I mean. I would learn long division and memorize fag poems because I would know, like I could just smell it, that under that denim shirt and that bullshit granny dress she wears to school, she got this:

You see what I'm saying?

See below for answers to Friday's GuitarMania quiz.

Solos

2005-05-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

OK, you lazy, lazy, unfeeling people.

I made my little compilation of guitar solos for you and almost none of you tried to guess the titles. Would it have been too much trouble to just make up a list of songs, any songs, and post them here in a comment? Well, now I can tell you the truth that there was a prize, and it was a brand new Pontiac 6, just like Oprah gives away at her show. But I'm sending it back, because no one cared enough to try to win it. Not only that, but maybe now there will be no GuitarMania 2, including some Yardbirds-era Clapton and the triple solo on the B-side of "Abbey Road." How do you feel now? Not so smug, I'll bet. (Note: None of this is directed at the beautiful and talented Laurie Kay Ransonette Anderson or the extremely kind and ethical Aydreeyin Oneiric.)

So here are the songs, and the artists, and the guitarists who played the solos (if I know them):

Johnny B. Goode (intro) - Chuck Berry
Louie Louie - The Kingsmen
Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson (James Burton)
You Really Got Me - The Kinks (Dave Davies)
Concrete and Clay - Uhit 4 Plus 2
Right Place, Wrong Time - Dr. John (probably Leo Nocentelli)
One of These Nights - Eagles (probably Joe Walsh)
Dixie Chicken - Little Feat (Lowell George and Paul Bererre)
I Saw the Light - Todd Rundgren (he played all the parts)
Redneck Friend - Jackson Brown (David Lindley)
Cinnamon Girl - Crazy Horse (Neil Young)
Johnny B. Goode (solo) - Chuck Berry
Cinnamon Girl (reprise) - Neil Young

Hey, it's OK. Bloggers are geeks, right? Which means you were all stupefied from watching Star Wars, and unable to think about anything else. It was really just a scheduling conflict. I love ya, now get outta here.

Jones In Love

2005-05-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

I confess herewith to a not-so-secret lifelong love affair.

My Uncle Ralph, a truly magnificent Irish drunk, played the ukulele. If you could sing it, he could accompany you, and I made him play every chance I got. Sometimes when I was very young he would let me try to play his ukulele, but he was not a teacher and I couldn't figure out how to make it work. He encouraged me, but he didn't know what to say to make the instrument clear to me. In those interludes when I was holding the thing, the fun would stop, and I would get self-conscious in the deafening, expectant silence. Each time I would sheepishly hand it back to him, and the sing-along would resume.

So I made myself content to watch. I watched his fingers on the frets, moving around in some incomprehensible musical braille, while his other hand strummed and plucked. The strumming and plucking made more sense to me than the fingering. I could feel the rhythm, and I could move my own hand in time with it, but I knew from my few attempts that both hands had to work together, each doing an independent job at opposite ends of the instrument, or it would be no good.

For various reasons, the jam sessions with Uncle Ralph came to end when I was ten years old. Not long after that I went by myself to a matinee movie at the Paramount Theater in my little town in southern Minnesota. I sat alone in the dark under the starry ceiling of that old monument, and my future was revealed to me. The movie was "Rock Around the Clock." Bill Haley and the Comets, and they weren't playing ukuleles.

The music and the electricity was so powerful it was all I could think about for days. I even tried to build an electric guitar of my own. Actually I tried to get my dad to do it, but he wisely declined, realizing that, on the off chance that we succeeded, neither of us knew how to play it. For five years I dreamed of that movie, that sound, that excitement, and I asked my parents for a guitar at every gift-giving occasion.

When I was fifteen, I got my first guitar.

I started late, I guess, but I caught up fast, bcause I didn't put the thing down for about two years. Before the first year was up I had started a band, my first of many kid bands. I learned by listening to records and copying what I heard. I had a turntable that could run as slow as 16 RPM, so I could slow down the difficult parts and work on them out of real time.

I played it until my fingers stung from pressing on the strings. After a few months my fingertips were hard and impervious to pain. I taught myself how to do most of the things I wanted to do. When I touched the instrument, put my hands on the neck and the strings, it cried, it moaned, it screamed and whispered. When you see guitar players making faces as they play, they are not putting on a show. They are feeling the music as it flows back and forth between the player and the instrument.

If you want to hear some of the playing that inspired me and made me fall in love and kept my heart a happy prisoner all these years, click on the guitar above, or here. A lot of what you will hear was culled from old vinyl, so don't be judging the sound quality. Just dig the licks. These are guitar solos only, except for one vocal phrase I left in, and yes, I know it's raw. Frankly, it was the violence that attracted me at first.

Warning: The file is over 4 MB. If you're on a dial-up connection, go get a haircut while it downloads.

There is an alternate version of the file here. It's in the Microsoft .wma format, smaller for faster downloads, but not as universally compatible. Best bet is to right-click on it (or whatever you Mac users do) and save it to your computer, then play it.

Who can name all the songs? (Hint: One of them is in there twice.)

This is a Crime

2005-05-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

I just washed my car this morning.

OK, I didn't exactly wash it. I went to the car wash. The point is, my car was freshly scrubbed, and looking good. Then I parked it and went in to work.

When I came out of my office eight hours later, I discovered that the automatic sprinklers near where I had parked had come on and sprinkled my car. My beautiful red car was covered with muddy waterspots. As you may be able to see from the picture (or not, now that I look at it), the spray from the sprinkler went all the way across the car to the street side. The spots show up nicely on the windshield, but let me assure you that the entire car was covered, front and back, left to right. Then the hot sun dried them out, and now I will have to go back to the carwash, or else wash it myself, the very next day.

This really pisses me off. Why do the sprinklers point out in the street? They must, because there was no wind today. The sprinklers were simply aimed at my car. I wonder if any water got on the grass.

I will admit that this is not as bad as being attacked by snakes, or having lunch with Dick Cheney. Maybe I should count my blessings. But, damnit, I spent time and money at the carwash, and then my paint got all fucked up, like, immediately.

OK. Sorry. In other news, my story called Promised Land has been moved to this location. I couldn't handle the pressure of trying to write right here in front of everybody. So it has it's own space now, where you can read it if you feel like it, and I get to work at the leisurely pace befitting a man of my age. I don't expect any readers to go there and make comments on it, but I have enabled comments just in case, so feel free. Getting it off this blog makes it easier for me to just write, and even go back and make changes, the way you'd do if you were writing a story, and not a blog. I will also add Promised Land to my blogroll in the sidebar. Don't get me wrong: I'm hoping someone will read it. I just won't come after you if you don't.

Rules of the Game

2005-05-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

Sundays we played volleyball.

Looking back it feels like we played the game for years, in the bright sun, under the gray sky, on still and humid September Sundays. We played. But it couldn't have been years, could it? People came and went, the energy surged and waned. We paired off and disappeared, sometimes forever. But everything was forever then. How could there be an ending to those holy days, those brown and beautiful bodies, those perfect visions?

I can still feel the sting of the ball, its heft as I dug it out just before it hit the grass. I can see it spin up again, two more chances. We could fly in those days, before we found out about the things that are not possible. You have to keep it in the air. It can never touch the ground, but you can't just grab it and stop it. You could save it that way, of course, but it's not allowed. The rules of the game. What makes perfect sense, you can't do that. You must serve, dig, volley, set, fake and spike, defying gravity, the rules of the game countermanding the laws of physics, of life, of the natural order.

We were out of college, all of us big boys boys and girls, starting our real lives, looking for our places in life, the ways we would make good, change the world, build the future. We were artists, con men, housewives and whores, makers, buyers and sellers door to door. We were learning the rules, making the rules, breaking the rules. Twenty or thirty of us, this is the way we partied, every week. Hard-fought games in the sun, Mexican beer in the coolers, whiskey, wine, music and drugs under cover of night.

I met you there on that field, and we played that game for all it was worth. After a while I told you that you had a nice set, and you cast your lovely dark eyes down, but you knew exactly what I meant. Then we played a different game, a game that didn't have such easy rules, or maybe there were no rules at all - I never knew for sure.

I thought I was so smart. I thought I could play you, and you let me think it was true, while you volleyed and set me up, in the game where you made the rules. I thought I was winning you, but I was losing myself.

What a prize I was, brown and lean and smart and hard. What an ass I was, young and thoughtless and cruel. I guess you got what you were after, although I know I didn't give you what you wanted. I guess I took what I needed from you, and I thought it was love. For a moment I held your heart in my hands, and you gave me indulgence and forgave me my sins.

Now I can't find you anywhere, and I am certain that I never will. I catch glimpses in dreams, and I cannot speak. But I have learned the rules of the game, and now is when I need to confess to you, and now is when I need one last absolution.

Get Thee Below Me

2005-05-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

Well, OK. It's never too late to learn.

Boy, that last post sank like a stone, didn't it? Let's bury it a little further right now. It was just stream of consciousness, in a way. I bit my tongue, I wrote about biting my tongue, I bit my tongue because I was eating too fast, food was in my mouth because of the eating, and yeah, it made kind of a nasty picture, but believe me, the reality was much worse for me than the description was for you.

Somehow it just turned into that kinky kissing thing which, coming right after the ghastly image of half-masticated food - and come on, some of you were also thinking about blood, too, weren't you? - well, I can see now that it was just too much. Since I am a sophisticated man of the world, you're probably thinking "How could he have committed such a faux pas?" I could say that I love you all, and I was overwhelmed by the desire to plant a smooch on you. In fact, that's really my only defense, weak as it is. So that's what I'll say.

Sue me.

Just Gimme A Kiss... Like This.

2005-05-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

I bit my tongue at lunch today.

And I mean I got the back part of it caught between the molars, back there where the jaw has the most possible leverage, in the area I usually use for crushing diamonds, and chomped down on it good and hard. I was eating at my desk, like a pig. Worse than a pig, actually. I was eating fast, stuffing food in faster than I could swallow, getting it on my face, on my desk, on the floor, everywhere. Luckily I was alone in my office. I was doing something on the computer and answering the phone, and I just got that big ol' piece of tongue-meat caught in my teeth and before I could stop pigging I had bitten it so hard that I almost cried. I had to stop all activity for about a minute. This is not a pretty picture, folks, me sitting there trying not to weep or drool, my mouth filled with half-masticated salad, unable to close it.

I was able to finish my lunch, because I am a pig, but much more slowly, and within the hour the pain started to spread downward so it felt like a sore throat (it still does, eight hours later). For several hours the pain radiated as far south as my sternum. Just a moment earlier I had been pain-free and lovin' life. Now I was crippled in the mouthal area. Like a toothache, it was all I could think of, and I know it will be with me at least all through tomorrow, when I have meetings.

I didn't want to bite my tongue.

I wanted to bite your tongue.

I wanted to put my hand on your shoulder and begin slowly to draw you toward me. Trying in vain to look you in the eyes, I'd be seeing only your mouth. When your face came close to mine, I'd brush my lips on yours, just a whisper of a brush, then I'd use my lips - only my lips - to gently push yours apart. I'd slip my hand around to the back of your neck, the better to hold you still, and I'd use my tongue to tickle just the very corner of your kissy mouth, that edge where the top and bottom lips dissolve into one another, first the left side, then the right, then back, two times, maybe three, my tongue starting to stroke your luscious lips with each pass across them.

I wanted to make love to your wanton mouth with mine, softly bite and tug that pouty smile right off your face, taste that space just behind those lips, run my eager tongue along your teeth, meet your own soft and sexual tongue in the wet darkness there. I wanted to devour you, be inside you and all around you, starting with your beautiful, hungry, lascivious mouth, the only part of all your gorgeous parts I can think of tonight.

And all I want from you, all I will need tonight, all I ask, is your hot breath, your pliant lips, your open mouth, your searching tongue and your dirty desire.

Can you give me that?

A Lump in My Throat

2005-05-03T22:09:00.000-07:00

Ma, send me money now, I'm gonna make it somehow...

I convinced myself at an early age that I had no artistic ability. I don't remember doing this, but somehow it must have happened, because there exists no evidence of me ever trying anything creative as a child. I didn't fingerpaint on the walls or go out in outlandish costumes on Halloween. I choked in the sixth-grade Christmas pageant. I was Joseph, and I screwed up my lines.

Maybe it was an incident in first grade that closed the book on my creative efforts. We were "working with clay" one day. The teacher handed out lumps of brown clay. Everybody got a lump, and we all messed around with our lumps for a while. The teacher was going around the room, making sure everybody had a lump, and, it seemed to me, making sure that we were all comfortable and enjoying ourselves with our lumps of clay. After a tough hour of "See Dick run" I was ready for a little R&R, even though reading came naturally to me.

So I was bashing my lump of clay around on my desk, or maybe we were sitting at a table, I can't recall, rolling it into a ball, flattening it, shaping it into a cube, when the teacher finally got everyone settled and went back to the front of the classroom and made the announcement that she wanted each of us to make an animal with our clay.

I was stricken with horror. An animal? I couldn't make an animal. How do you make an animal? I had no clue. I stared at my pancake of clay in front of me on the desk, trying to think what to do first, my stomach in a knot and my heart sinking fast. I tried to complain about the assignment, tried to explain that this was just too difficult, that there was no way, but the teacher smiled in that bitchy, patronizing way they have and told me to get to it, of course you can make an animal. Just go ahead and make one, any animal will be fine, we're not here to judge.

Perfect. She couldn't see the panic I was feeling, and she was going to force me to perform for her. This is probably why to this day I look for tall, dominant women to tie me up and - wait, that's another story.

Anyway, I made a snake.

While the rest of the class was shaping legs and ears and tails and antlers, the little bastards, I took my clay and rolled it into a thin tube about a foot long. I tapered it a little at the back end, but I doubt if I had the herpetological expertise to make a hood, the characteristic mark of the cobra, or even a mouth. So I probably didn't. This is all a little blurry to me, as I am just recovering this memory now after all these years.

I had found a loophole. Legally, a snake was an animal. She didn't say "mammal," or "any animal except a snake." She had said "...any animal will be fine." So I had her, and I was off the hook.

Of course you know what happened. The snake didn't fly. I remember clearly when it was my turn to show what I had made, I held it up and said "I made a snake." Even though I knew I was in compliance with the letter of the assignment, I had a lump in my throat, because I knew the snake wasn't going to cut it. And it didn't.

Her smile turned into a sneer, then a small, derisive snicker escaped as she told me that a snake wasn't good enough. Oh, she didn't use those words, of course, but her meaning was clear enough: "You are a rotten kid. You have tried to slide by on this assignment, using a technicality. And you are not getting away with it!" In sympathy, the rest of the class laughed uproariously at me and my snake. My face burned, my vision blurred, my heart palpitated. If we could have found a hole, we would have crawled into it, me and the snake.

She forced me to make something else, and I think I made a cow, taking care to make the worst cow ever sculpted, to prove to her that I had no aptitude for this, that I was right and she was wrong, and she should never have tried to make a sculptor out of me. As soon as she saw it and half-heartedly approved, I destroyed it violently. And I never tried to make anything out of clay again.

In fact, for many years my nickname was Snake, because I always tried to slide by on technicalities, hoping some strong woman would take me in hand and - no, no. Other story. I remained The Snake until I played in a softball league with a guy named Ed who weighed about 130 pounds but whose amazing sinuous swing was good for a home run about every third time he batted. He actually wanted to be called The Snake, and by that time I was glad to shed that skin, so to speak.

I carried the trauma of that horrible first-grade play-time humiliation into adulthood, although it was effectively repressed and I seemed normal. Until one night on the living room floor at the home of some friends with young children. We were playing with some of the thousands of toys that kids seem to accumulate these days, when somebody brought out a couple of cans of Play-Doh.

And handed me a lump.

The memory of that horrible first-grade embarrassment came flooding back. The kids were making animals. Handily shaping their lumps into whatever the hell they chose. And I made the decision that I had to stand up and fight my demon, or it would torment me forever. I determined that I was going to make an animal, or die trying.

Here is what I made:
There's a bigger version up at the top of this post, for those of you who are stunned by the artistry and want a closer look, and who missed it while you were up there the first time. I made it completely from scratch, without a picture or a model to work from. I just closed my eyes and saw elephant. Don't tell me you didn't know it was an elephant. That would make you no better than the kids in my first grade class, who laughed at me and my snake.

Since I made this elephant my self-esteem has been sky high, and women frequently tie me up and have their way with me. Yes, I have learned an important lesson. And that lesson is this: Play-Doh smells real good, but it tastes like shit.

Foot Bone Connected to the Head Bone

2005-04-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

No one can make me happy about working at my crummy job.

For the past few months, due to mismanagement and bad planning, my job has been a brutal nightmare. If I were not already highly skilled and efficient at what I do, I would surely have fallen apart. But the fact that I can make up for failures elsewhere in The Corporation doesn't mean I want to, or that I enjoy it, or that I should have to. I have complained about this all I dare in previous posts, so some who are reading this now are aware of my attitude. I'm a little grumpy.

Now, things are more or less back to normal and I don't have to use my super powers to get the work done, and this annoys me, too. Mind you, I don't take credit for this turn of events - it was just a happy accident. The various managers, supervisors, vice presidents and directors forgot to screw things up this month.

I refuse to act busy, so I find myself going around looking for things to do. At the Post Office or on a Teamster job, this might get me killed, but at my job they already think I'm a crazy misfit, so they barely notice.

I ran out of things to do by mid-afternoon, so I checked my email a thousand times, redesigned a form I want to start using, read a bunch of blogs and commented on a few, and then I just sat in my office for a while, sort of becoming one with the furniture. I tried to make my mind a blank, and it seemed to be working. But I looked in there and the thought that I found was this: I wonder if I can touch the top of my head with my big toe.

Think about it: The lowly foot getting to meet the head, home of the brain. They probably haven't seen each other since I was a very little baby, made of some kind of highly flexible rubber. The only communication they've had for all these years would be the brain sending down orders to walk, or run, or stop. One-way orders, no discussion, no compromise, no warning. The only way the foot would have had any input is if it sent pain signals, or if it simply broke. If I could touch my head with my foot it would be like a chauffeur getting a sit-down with the CEO. Who knows what good might come of it?

Remembering my psychocybernetics, though, I thought it would be the better part of valor to simply imagine vividly that I was touching the top of my head with my foot. Because as you know, the mind cannot distinguish between a real event and one vividly imagined, and besides, I didn't want to be carried out by my colleagues and driven to a hospital.

So I looked at my foot, gauged the distance and the bending that would be involved, and it only took a few seconds for me to say "Damn! I could actually do this."

Of course, that was just a theory, and it had to be tested. So I closed my office door, took off my shoes and got down on the floor, and yes, it turns out that I can touch the top of my head with my big toe. Not only that, but I can do it with either foot. OK, I admit I had to grab my ankle and drag my foot up there, and I can't put both feet up there at the same time, but what do you want? I'm putting it on my resume.

Sadly, the foot-brain conference did not take place. The foot got one look at the hideous haircut I got the other day, and went back to the garage, laughing.

Promised Land, Chapter 1

2005-04-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

...continued from here. The story starts here.

The third bus dropped him off in the city of Venice.

He'd been riding and changing buses for nearly three hours, inching his way across the endless city toward Jake's place at the beach. He was surprised to discover that he wasn't the only person in Los Angeles who didn't know where the hell he was. Even the people who lived here didn't know anything. He'd given the first driver Jake's address, and the guy had glanced at him for a split second, then turned back to his driving.

"Where is that?" Friendly, but stupid.

"I don't know. I was hoping you'd tell me." No sense pissing him off so soon. "Venice?"

That was the magic word. The bus rumbled twenty or thirty blocks while the guy hashed out a plan, talking to himself the whole time, working through the possibilities. Eventually he came up with an itinerary, involving a couple of transfers. It was barely comprehensible, but it worked.

By the time the kid got off at Pacific Avenue it was early afternoon and the sky had turned a bright, hazy gray, fading to brown at the horizon, when you could see it. It was hot, but there was no visible sun. There was a taste in the air that the kid had never known before, since he had never been less than a thousand miles from the sea, and now he was just two blocks from it. The bus lumbered away, and he stood there and looked after it.

A seagull wheeled far overhead. A siren howled in the distance. But for that there was no sound and no movement on the street. The Pacific Ocean lurked unseen just on the other side of some buildings to his left, and the lack of anything beyond it made him feel as if he were standing at the end of the world. The corner he was on featured two broken down apartment buildings, an empty lot and a corner grocery. He went into the little shop to buy cigarettes and a Coke and to ask about the address he was looking for. The guy at the counter was 40, completely bald and muscled like Marciano. His chest rippled under his shirt when he pushed the change across the counter. He shrugged at the address. "It's down Pacific." The kid borrowed an opener for the Coke, drained most of the bottle, then set out to find Jake.

It was a neighborhood of flaky stucco apartments, four and eight to a building, jammed side by side and all of them touching the sidewalk. The street curved gently to the right and disappeared a few blocks ahead. Parked cars lined both sides. As he rounded the curve, things started to happen.

An ambulance overtook him from behind and raced past. Two boys on bicycles followed, and behind that a police black-and-white went by, too fast for the narrow, curving street. Rounding the curve himself, he saw the official vehicles parked all over the street. Ambulance, couple of squad cars, paramedics, fire truck. Uniforms all over the place. As always, the cops had drawn a small crowd, and now they were engaged in crowd control. They were standing in various heroic poses around the scene, refusing to speak to the curious neighbors. The kid had been looking at addresses, and now he saw that he must be very near his destination.

The cops seemed to be guarding one of the apartment buildings, and they seemed to be too late. The windows on the ground floor were smashed, glass and pieces of the frames blown outward and strewn on the sidewalk. The front door was hanging by one hinge. The kid couldn't see the address on the building, and then he had gone as far as he could without knocking down one of the cops.

Through the broken doorway came the ambulance attendants rolling a stretcher, it's occupant under a sheet and showing only a bloody face. As they rushed past the dangling door it twisted off it's remaining hinge and fell face up on the sidewalk, revealing the four tin numbers tacked there. It was Jake's address. As the stretcher went by, the bloody face looked up at the kid.

"Hey Alvin," it said. "When did you hit town?" Then Jake was gone, stuffed into the waiting ambulance.

Holding the Phone

2005-04-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

Paper towels, huh? What would we do without them?

If I had been a pioneer I would have stolen a bunch of land from whoever was there ahead of me, and I would have tamed that land, and planted it, or mined it, or raised cattle. Whatever the hell I was doing outside, the little woman would have to be in the kitchen, cooking for me and the men. And when she spilled something she'd have to clean it up with a rag, which would then have to be washed. Until it was washed, it would sit around and stink, or perhaps get moldy. Jeez, what a mess!

But not if you have paper towels. If you have a lot of big, sturdy paper towels, you can wipe up any mess you make, and then just throw them away! Spill some beans on the wood-fired cookstove? No problem. OK, I think we're all on the same page now. Let's move on.

I went to Supercuts this morning, a chain of haircutting shops where English is a second language. You never know when you tell them how to cut your hair if they get it or not. "Take a half-inch off" might mean "leave a half-inch on." They always act like they know what you're saying, but I don't understand anything they say, so why should I expect them to understand me? And let me just tell you right now that I have nothing but the highest regard for those who have immigrated to the U.S. from other places and are making their way in this strange land, getting jobs, buying houses, learning a new culture. Greatest respect. But now I am sporting perhaps the worst haircut of my life. It could be the worst one in Los Angeles, although - and I can't verify this - I might be very hip in Cambodia. I don't know how such a small amount of hair can be made to stick out so forcefully in all directions.

But I am not proud. I took my weird haircut like a man and went on to the rest of my errands. The main one was I had to exchange a telephone that I bought at Radio Shack. Since I bought it at Radio Shack, I saved all the packaging and the receipt, because I figured I might have to take it back.

This was not a cell phone, but a regular wireless home phone. It has big buttons, though, and a volume control, stuff that's hard to find. I took the phone in to the store, where two pleasant-looking young people were standing behind the counter. This is what I told them:

"I bought this phone four days ago, and it seems to have a problem. I charged it for 12 hours, and it went completely dead in less than an hour. I charged it for another 12 hours, and it lasted a bit longer, but I have never gottten even four hours of use out of a charge. So I think it's defective, and I'd like to exchange it for another one just like it."

To my surprise, tboth clerks agreed, and one of them went into the stockroom to get me a new phone, while the other one started to ring up the transaction. Alas, the price of the phone had gone up in the few days since I had made my purchase. This was a serious issue for the Radio Shack Kids. They huddled over the register for a few minutes discussing this impossible customer service conundrum: How can we charge this guy an extra 20 bucks now that we've agreed that his phone is defective?

They had to call tech support. I'm not kidding. They had to make three phone calls and wait on hold for five minutes each time. One of the calls was because they had forgotten to ask something on the previous call. But I was patient. I was in the right and God was on my side, it was a beautiful day and I wasn't going to ruin it by pulling out a weapon and demanding justice.

It turns out the issue was that the phone had gone up twenty dollars, but there was a twenty-dollar mail-in rebate on it. If they changed the price for me, the computer would still have printed out my rebate form, thus I might get away with something. Rule Number One in modern corporate sales: Never let the customer get away with anything. The solution, no doubt provided by the president of the company was this: Change the price for the man, and keep the rebate slip. The clerk who finally did this for me and handed me my new phone actually tried to convince me that he had wanted to do it that way from the start.

Why then, did he have to talk on the phone for twenty minutes while I stood there cooling my heels? Then it hit me: The hidden cameras in the store were taking pictures of my grotesque haircut, and it was being emailed to all the stores so the schmoes who had to work on Sunday could have a laugh.

Promised Land, Prologue

2005-04-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

The kid hit town on the Super Chief from Kansas City, mid-morning in L.A.

Union Station, maybe he'd get back there some day, look around. Some kind of museum, nothing like it back home. He'd never ride the train again, though. Fucking snooty porters. A buck for a pillow. He'd rolled up his heavy coat and slept on that. Never wear that fucking thing again, either. Not in the promised land.

First day of summer in Los Angeles, and you could hardly see the end of the block, fucking air was so thick. It burned, too. Old timers would tell him You shoulda been here in fifty-seven, fifty-eight. Air was so bad it'd chip your teeth. Fuck them. This was bad enough. He could barely open his eyes. It felt like he was in a burning house. He walked out the front, past the cab stand, dropped his duffel bag and guitar case and hung the coat on a parking meter. Dug through the pockets for the phone number he had written down, found it, and went looking for a pay phone, leaving the coat behind. Who needed it here? He'd get something nice in L.A., something with some eyeball, who needs the farmer suit?

First things first, though. Call Jake. Jake had been out here for a year, knew the ropes, said he had a gig for the kid, make some real money for a change. Hah. Money for a change. Tired of working for change, those dives in K.C. Fucking drunks didn't know their butts from page eight, comes to good music. Night after night in those dives, he couldn't play bad enough to bother anybody. He tried, too, at first a wrong note in an old standard, then whole wrong chords. Nobody noticed, fucking drunks puttin' their cheap hustles on each other, telling him tone it down, man, people are tryin' ta talk.

Fuck you, he thought. People are tryin' to play music. No more of that shit out here. They had good clubs here on the coast, famous places, clean places, where people came to listen. Places like Shelley's, and The Lighthouse, and up north The Hungry i. He was already thinking the coast, trying it on, rolling it around in his mind. I'm on the coast.

He found a phone booth, went in and dialed, his eyes burning and watering. Five rings, six. He fished a Lucky out of his shirt pocket, lit it with the old Zippo. Eight rings. He hadn't told Jake he was coming, and now he started to regret it. He thought he'd surprise his big brother. Hey, man, I'm here! Maybe it wasn't such a hot idea. Ten rings. He hung up the phone. He was sweating now, and the muggy brown air felt good when he opened the door of the booth.

Jake lived in Venice. The kid still had the postcard, a couple of broads in skimpy bikinis, Greetings From Venice Beach, California! Fucking Venice, like that place in Italy. Nothing was real out here. Those broads looked real, though. The address on Pacific Avenue. It's not much, Jake had said, but I'm never home anyway. Never home. Probably should have picked up on that, he thought now. He dropped the cigarette on the curb, put the sun at his back, and started walking.

In no time he was lost. The streets wouldn't let him keep the sun at his back, and soon the sun was straight overhead anyway. Good thing he'd dumped the coat. He rubbed his eyes for the hundredth time with his sweaty hands, and cursed the heat and the filthy air. A city bus lurched toward him, spewing black smoke. He had fifty bucks or so left in his pocket, lucky those porters had let him keep that much, a half pack of Lucky Strikes, his eyes and his feet burned and he had no idea where the hell he was. The bus door opened and the driver looked out at him, bored. The kid looked up and down the street, but there was no one coming to his rescue. He stepped aboard, heading for the promised land.

Continued here.

Lesbian Love Slaves Who Like It Both Ways!

2005-04-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

That ought to bring in a little traffic.

I know what you're thinking: Both ways? Doesn't he know there are more than two ways? I thought Larry Jones was a man of the world. How is it possible that he thinks that both ways would cover it?

OK, you got me. I was planning to write about just two ways tonight, in lascivious detail, until you were drooling on the edge of your seat, begging for more. Then I was going to give you more! Sure, I know about those other ways. I may even have tried a few of them. Or at least in a psychocybernetics kind of way, I might have imagined them so vividly that I now believe I actually did them.

Did you know the brain has a hard time telling the difference between things that really happened to you and things that you have vividly imagined? Makes sense, when you think about it. The arms and legs, and, uh, other parts are out there taking care of business, walking, sky-diving, getting in fights, getting laid, shooting baskets, and what does the brain know? It has to believe what it's being told about what's going on "out there." If you tell it (by vividly imagining it) that you are shooting a thousand jump shots a day, and you're hitting most them, your brain will eventually start to think "Damn, I'm getting good at this! I'll bet I could join a team and be the star player!" The brain would start to "remember" hitting all those shots, exactly as it remembers real stuff that happened, like going to the bathroom a thousand times a day (if you do that, although I don't recommend it).

Sometimes I wonder how much of my past really happened, and how much I just made up and told myself the story so many times that my brain is totally convinced. Like, was I really on Apollo 13? Did I ever perform at The Apollo? I don't know anymore.

One thing I'm sure of is that the babe I saw at the grocery store tonight was looking at me. I know because I was looking at her, and I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable at me checking her out, so whenever she caught me I pretended I was just looking at something else that happened to be right over her shoulder, like the boxes of soup. Did you know that soup comes in boxes now?

Anyway after a while I realized that she was catching me way too many times for it to be a coincidence. Then I started to feel all cocky and cool: Hey, she's checking me out. So, as we're pushing our carts up and down the aisles and we keep being in the same department at the same time, I got bolder and let her catch me red-handed, as it were, a couple of times, and I gave her my shy smile. It had to be another crazy coincidence that she headed straight for the checkout counter right after that.

But now I'm wondering if I really have lesbian love slaves, how many ways I've given it to them, if they like it, and what's on for tomorrow. Hey! Wipe that drool off the edge of your seat.

Not In My Back Yard

2005-04-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

My back yard, in fact my entire neighborhood, is alive with springtime.

Trees which have been bare for months are undergoing their annual rebirth, sprouting the sweetest bright green leaves. Feral tomcats are feeling amorous and serenading the domestic females up and down the block. The asphalt skateboarders are out in force, methodically practicing the same tricks over and over, pressing daylight hours to the very limit and daring passing motorists to run them down. These surly boys were just toddlers last fall, weren't they?

Now that Daylight Time has gone into effect, I hear the many nesting birds outside my bedroom window, chattering excitedly while I am trying to stretch my all-too-short nights' sleep a few more minutes. This morning I heard a couple of starlings going at it over location, location, location.

She: There's a cat in this yard. I just don't feel good about building here.

He: I'm telling you, honey, I've checked it out, and the lady across the alley throws birdseed out every day. We'll build the nest in a tree. No cat can catch us, and we'll have free food. What could be better?

She: That's what you said last year about the eaves of that Mexican restaurant. Free tortilla chips, you said! But you didn't think about the busboy with the BB gun, did you? I still have a pellet in my butt!

He: Nag, nag, nag. I'm the one who has to go get the twigs and the grass and the gum wrappers to bulid this thing, while you just sit here and complain.

She: Complain?! That's a good one, Mister I-don't-want-to-sit-on-those-eggs! I ask one little favor and you act like you can't be bothered.

He: You have no idea how hard it is to find worms in this town. You'd think grass seed would be good enough for you, and the occasional crust of bread, but no, not for The Princess. I fry my feathers flying all over the place looking for extra special treats for you, and all I want when I come back to the nest is a little appreciation --

She: -- Appreciate THIS, Mr. Big Shot! YOU stay here all day guarding the eggs and watching for that damned cat, and I'll cruise around town, wasting time with my NO-GOOD FRIENDS!

He: You leave my friends out of this.

She: I'd like to. If you spent half the time here taking care of things as you do out on the telephone wire by the pool hall -- get away from me!

He: Aw, c'mon, baby. You want me to "take care of things," don't you?

She: Mmmm, yeah, Big Boy...

So goes the circle of life in the trees. But a more alarming conversation seems to be getting underway in the back yard - that between Molly the Cat and a couple of mockingbirds who may be moving in.

Last spring, mockingbirds built a nest somewhere in our vicinity - we never found the damned thing - and proceeded to claim as their own the entire region in the name of the Mockingbird King and all of Mockingbirdland. They perched on various trees, on wires, on rooftops and weathervanes, and every time they saw Molly the Cat they attacked.

At first, the attacks were verbal. Scurrilous they were, but as I told Molly the Cat, words will never hurt you. Upon spotting the cat, one of the birds would fly down from God knows where to the nearest perch that was out of reach and issue the first warning, a one-syllable epithet that sounded an awful lot like the word "SHIT!" all the while giving M the C the old mockingbird stinkeye. "SHIT!" they would shout, followed by a low-pitched, scary call reminiscent of an angry old man saying "crap," but drawing it out real long for effect: "Craaaaaaaaap. Cra-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-p!"

The verbal attacks went on for several weeks. Molly the Cat started to develop a nervous tick, and she would never go outside without standing in the doorway for a minute or so, staring out in fear.

I did some pissed-off bird research, and I discovered that mockingbirds are known not only as beautiful singers, but they have an uncanny ability to learn the songs of other birds, that they seem to have an abiding love for music, often staying up late, drinking and singing as many as fifty songs that they have learned, just for the pure joy of learning. And drinking and singing, I assume.

But, ominously, I also learned that mockingbirds are highly territorial, and will go up against almost any animal who ventures near the area they have claimed as their own.

Sure enough, one day I walked out the back door with M. (she had gotten so she wouldn't go outside without an escort), and I heard a sharp "SHIT!" from the garage roof. Then from next door the other mockingbird came swooping in, while the first one said "Craaaaaaaaap" in that threatening way. While I was distracted by that, the second bird came buzzing down at me, flapping and squawking and missing me by about an arm's length. Then they both went up to a nearby overhead wire and glared down at us, cursing "SHIT!" and "Cra-a-a-a-a-a-a-p...." Molly the Cat bolted for some bushes, and got buzzed by both birds before she made it to shelter.

This went on for SIX WEEKS, while the mockingbabies were incubated, then hatched, then weaned, making the back yard pretty miserable for me, and totally uninhabitable for Molly the Cat. I don't mind saying that I was getting pretty exasperated. I went back to my internet research, to see if there was some humane way I could get rid of these little bullies, and that's when I discovered to my horror that mockingbirds will sometimes raise TWO BROODS IN A ROW in the same location in one season. Sometimes.

OK, you know what happened, right? Right. A second brood. More squacking, cursing, swooping and pecking. Six more weeks, effectively ruining the whole summer before they finally left, sometime in September, although they didn't say goodbye, so I don't remember exactly.

Who the fuck do these mockingbirds think they are, anyway? We were here first. We are PAYING for this land, these trees, this house, the very garbage they eat. It got to the point where they would spot Molly the Cat when she was just looking out the window, and yell "SHIT!" at her. She was in counseling until January.

And now it looks like they are back. They must have liked it last year. Maybe I was too gentle. Maybe I was a sucker. Yeah, that's it. I was a chump. Well, this year - No more Mr. Nice Guy! If they yell "SHIT!" at me...

Who am I kidding? I couldn't even find their nest last year, and even if I could, I'm probably too soft to take any irrevocable action.

Besides, those little bastrds are badass. SHIT!

...Same As the Old Boss

2005-04-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

Now I have no boss at all.

The place where I work has always been pretty loose. We are now part of a huge corporation, having been bought out a few years ago, but we get our part of the job done, so we have mostly been allowed to do it our own way. The main difference is we now have to report every breath we take on poorly-designed Microsoft Excel spreadsheet forms that we get from headquarters. It took them two years to figure out how to protect the cells with formulas in them. For all that time the spreadsheets came with warnings: "DO NOT TYPE IN THE CELLS WITH FORMULAS!!"

This laissez faire mindset has extended to the relationship between the worker bees and the local management. Basically, management is ignored, unless they threaten to fire you, and then you kiss enough ass to keep your job, and soon you can go back to ignoring them. In general, this suits the managers OK, since they don't know anything about hiring, firing, training or motivating anyway, and being ignored relieves them of having to either learn something about managing or act like they know something about it, and gives them more time to check the horse racing results on the internet.

The good thing about a really big corporation (I think this is true, although this is my first experience with this sort of thing), is that nobody you meet in the halls knows exactly who you are, or, more importantly, who you know. You might be friends with the Regional Vice President. So if you maintain the right attitude and a certain swagger in walk and talk, most of the suits will leave you alone, because what if you're important? At the same time, of course, I don't get to browbeat anyone I meet in the halls, for much the same reason. So there's good news and bad news, I guess.

Much of the way things work is like an army. No one knows what you're doing, and you don't know what they're doing, and none of you have been told exactly why you're doing it, and it has to be done that way because, goddamnit, that's the way it has to be done. In an army, though, everyone wears uniforms and insignia, so you know who gets to boss whom, thus taking away the natural camouflage we in corporate life enjoy. We have the same confusion as they do in the army, but we also don't know who's in charge.

So now the Big Guy at our location has been moved Somewhere Else, and he has not been replaced. Essentially, there is no one at the helm. We don't know when or if a new Big Guy will be appointed. We know that The Corporation has a penchant for hiring young, eager college grads for jobs that they might be ready for in ten years. We assume it's because they cost less than people who actually know what they are doing. But we don't even have a whiff of a taste of a water-cooler rumor as to what the fuck is going to happen.

So now, as might be expected when there is no leadership whatsoever, everybody is ignoring everybody else, no one knows if the new Big Guy is already among us, or even if it's one of us, and the miracle is that the place still functions pretty much as it always has. But I actually have no one to report to. I have to think up work, assign it to myself, with a deadline, complain about the workload (to myself), miss the deadline, give myself some shit and promise it'll never happen again.

Sa-weeet.

You Don't Owe Me Nothing

2005-04-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

It was wrong of me, I know, to think I could know you, any part of you that you did not reveal.

Foolish to think I could tell what you were telling, to feel any real friendship, to sense any camaraderie. Not your fault that I tried, probably not my fault, either. I'm just wired that way. A little pseudo soul-baring, and certain synapses fire. The feeling is as real as a dream. I carry it along from sleeping to waking, and it is part of me, like I know my phone number, like I know what drawer contains the knives. For a little while it is scribbled on a scrap of paper and pulled out when needed; for a little while I have to pull out all the drawers, looking for the knives. But then it is second nature, my fingers know the number, I go instinctively for the correct drawer, and the knife is in my hand.

It's like that, but it's not that.

We never knew each other. We never were friends. The whole thing is - not a sham, exactly. Just... not anything. Like Los Angeles, there is no there there. I can't blame you, because in a way you weren't in on it. It all happened inside me, flecks of matter flying through my empty universe, pieces falling into other pieces, exploding apart and coming back together again under the spell of gravity, circling each other until something began to take shape. I should have known it wasn't real, because it never settled down, kept changing shape in a way that real things do not. Real things come into focus and let you get a good look at them, let you return to them and find them essentially unchanged.

Evolving, but the same inside.

And you said from the start it wasn't real, that it was all imagined. I just didn't know how much of the imagining was mine.

Bad Day on the River

2005-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

I think I know how Charlie Allnut felt.

Humphrey Bogart and Kate Hepburn starred in The African Queen in 1951. He plays drunken riverboat Captain Charlie Allnut, she's prim and proper spinster missionary Rose Sayer, and they are in Africa. His boat is a filthy, decrepit, 30-foot tub called The African Queen. In 1914, as World War 1 gets underway, they begin a journey, alone together, down the river. All I can say about the story is that they must get down the river to the lake at the end. It's a matter of life and death. They must overcome many obstacles, but there is one scene in particular I am thinking of today.

On it's way down river, the Queen becomes mired in weeds and muck, and surely they will die in the jungle if they don't get moving. The broken down old steam engine can't make any headway in the shallow, overgrown river, and the current isn't strong enough to move the boat. Reluctantly, Charlie climbs overboard, attaches a line to the boat, and slowly begins to tow it himself, trudging slowly through the muddy river, a surly anti-hero, doing the right thing in spite of himself.

Eventually he climbs back into the boat for a break, and in a moment they both notice that he is covered with leeches!! They are all over his body, black, slimy slugs, tightly attached to his flesh and -- say it with me -- sucking his blood. He cries and dances in horror and revulsion, slapping at himself and begging Rose to "get 'em off me, get 'em off me!!" Together they peel the disgusting things off, and Charlie's near-psychotic episode gradually subsides. When he can stop shaking from fear, Charlie and Rose must reassess their situation. The boat is still dead in the water, and there is still no current. It is clear what has to happen. Charlie, a look of infinite sorrow on his face, takes up the rope, slips over the side into the leech-infested river, and begins towing again. Only this time he knows what will happen to him while he is in the water.

That's how I'll feel when I go to my job tomorrow.

What Are the Odds?

2005-04-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be in a car wreck.

I'm a good driver and I drive all over Southern California. Contrary to what the rest of the nation might surmise from other evidence, we are mostly good drivers here. We're not as aggressive and feisty as those in New York or Iowa - you know who you are. When arriving at a traffic jam, we are aware that leaning on the horn will not make the problem go away. We are familiar with the concept of "joining the queue," and we do so, not happily, but with a resignation born of experience, and the knowledge that, what the fuck, we're on the freeway and we can't get off and go around the mess.

Oh, sure, there were a few bizarre incidents in the early nineties, road rage things where people would pull over to discuss some real or imagined slight, and wind up throwing down on each other with automatic pistols and sawed-off shotguns. There was a bumper sticker going around in those days that said "Don't shoot! I'll pull over." But that craziness notwithstanding (and yes, that is the first time I've ever used that word, and I'm not really sure what it means), we are a pretty sane, stay-in-the-lane bunch of motorists here.

We have to be, because there is no public transportaion to speak of -- no buses, streetcars, subways, monorails, taxis or trains. And walking is just... weird. Plus, everything is twenty miles away. So if you want to go anywhere, you have to drive. And we have embraced this concept since Day One and with such gusto that now there's like three cars for every person in Los Angeles. If you have a party and invite forty people, you'd better hire valet parkers because your guests will bring a hundred cars. You can see what a mess L.A. would be if we weren't patient, courteous and skilled behind the wheel.

But I live on a quiet residential street in an old part of town, old meaning the houses were built in the 1940's. (Hey, this ain't Europe.) In my neighborhood we don't have driveways along the sides of our houses, leading into our spacious three-car garages. We don't have driveways anywhere, and we don't have three-car garages. What we have is alleys, behind the backyards, and clunky old one-car garages that open onto the alleys.

Alleys are cool. You can find neat stuff out there. If you want to scavenge aluminum cans to sell to the recycler, the alley's your hangout. You can find old broken-down office furniture, corrugated fiberglass deck awnings, brushed aluminum Melitta coffeemakers that might work, if you can find the matching stainless steel carafe. And the fronts of the houses have a cleaner look, having virtually disavowed all knowledge of the automobile culture of Southern California. Lawn transitions gently into lawn and the sidewalks are unbroken by driveway entrances. Very upper class. (One drawback is that if you're a beginning extreme skateboarder, there are no driveway entrances on which to practice your jumps. Personally I don't see this as a drawback.)

My neighborhood can be described as "sleepy." My street is only wide enough for one car to pass if there are cars parked on either side, and no one complains. We are not trying to get the city to widen our street. We are happy with our street. We look way down the block as we're driving, and if we see a neighbor approaching in the opposite direction, we find a place to pull over, or they do, and we inch past each other, waving and smiling like the good, happy neighbors we are. And mind you, this vehicular face-off hardly ever happens, in our sleepy neighborhood.

The alley, however, is another story. By now you're wishing it's a story I would tell some other time, and you are thinking of clicking that "Next Blog" button, aren't you? Well, go ahead. I'll just tell it to myself, like I do so many things.

In the alley, people forget that they live in a sleepy neighborhood. Instead, they think they are in the chase scene from "The French Connection." Or maybe "Bullitt." They careen down the alleys, swerving left and right around the trash cans and scaring the living daylights out of the pigeons that my neighbor-across-the-alley feeds. The alleys, they think, are deserted. The alleys are made for speed. There is, to be fair, almost no traffic in my alley. But what there is goes by mighty quickly.

I am one of the few people in California (maybe anywhere, can I get some feedback on this?) who uses his garage for his car. The garages up and down my back alley are used variously as storage units, workshops, home gyms, rumpus rooms and guest houses. My garage has my car in it, and it sports almost completely blind access to the alley, due to the high brick walls that form the boundaries of my back yard. When backing out of my garage, I can't see what's going on in the alley until I am well out into it.

And here is where I have to ask, "What are the fucking odds?"

I inch glacially back out of the garage once or twice every day, so let's call it 45 times a month. I haven't done the math on this, but from the number of cars in my town, and the amount of alley traffic I have observed, it seems to me that maybe once every million times I leave my garage, another vehicle would be driving - careening - down the alley and arrive at the point in space where the back of my car is at the same time that I do.

And yet, despite the overwhelming odds against this happening, it happens at least once a month. The garage door opens, I start to back out, and just as I do, someone comes blasting down the alley at about fifty miles per hour. Because I have been inching slowly, they have seen me and somehow manage to miss me, much as they manage to miss the pigeons and the trash cans. But they don't slow down (maybe because Popeye Doyle is in hot pursuit). I know I could sit on the wall back there all day and not see a single car go by. So really, what are the odds of a near-miss like this happening even once in my life? And yet it happens all the time.

So I have resigned myself to the belief that I am going to be in an accident. Due to it's inevitability I'm not sure I can actually call it an accident. I mean, if you know something is going to happen, can it be accidental? And now that I know it's going to happen, will I unconsciously do things to make it happen, like back out faster? Maybe I should just panel the garage and put a refrigerator and a television out there, park on the street and save myself the insurance deductible, not to mention the uncomfortable deposition and three years of legal wrangling, all the while wearing a huge neck brace that makes me the object of derision at restaurants.

What are the odds of that happening?

Shake Your Coffee Maker

2005-03-29T23:35:00.000-08:00

Behold the grandeur that is the Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker!

Sensuous brushed aluminum surfaces. Stainless steel thermal carafe. Imposing. Important. Taller than a runway model. A coffeemaker that tells your friends "This is the coffeemaker of an imposing, important man, who doesn't have time to brew a pot of the best-tasting coffee in the world when he wakes up to begin his important day, so I, the Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker, will wait all night and then start myself up and brew his coffee automatically, five minutes before reveille, like only the very best wives would do."

This was the promise. OK, I admit I was seduced by her looks. I mean, look at her. She's gorgeous. From the first minute I saw her, I wanted her. I knew she would be high maintenance, but I thought we could work things out. And let me tell you, the honeymoon was rockin'! I thought the buzz would never end.

But the problems started after only a couple of months. First she stopped brewing coffee automatically in the mornings. I took over myself, and did it manually. She became lazy and her appearance went to hell. Eventually, she even refused to make a full pot of coffee. As I told you in this post, she would make a few cups and then stop without telling me. I'd have to start her up again manually, only to have her quit on me again after a couple more cups. The coffee tasted bad, as the grounds were drying out several times during the process. Eventually we weren't making beautiful coffee together at all.

I couldn't help myself. A new coffeemaker caught my eye. Shorter and plainer. No grandiose promises, but practical-looking, and no nonsense. This one, I thought, might be one I can live with. Maybe, I thought, we can build something together. Melitta had already checked out, and so I brought this new one home. I'm happy to report the coffee is once again fantastic. This one, a Cuisinart, says she will make coffee automatically in the morning, but I have decided against it. I'll carry my own weight around here from now on, and perhaps there will be less bitterness in this new relationship.

The Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker? Last time I saw her she was hanging out with the garbage cans in the alley, the trollop.

Blogger Blows Again

2005-03-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's going on yesterday and today with Blogger,

but I am having a hard time commenting on anyone else's blog. Not only that but my own post below, titled "Adult Language" has six comments, but seems to be reporting only four of them on the main page. Then when you go to the comments page, you find all six comments, but further commenting is disabled!. And on this, the only time I have ever explicitly solicited reader response. So Blogger has a cruel sense of humor. I did not disable comments on that post, I encouraged them.

I fully expect Blogger to be up and working soon like a well-oiled machine, so save your comments and post them when you can. Or email me - my email address is in my profile, if you can get to that. In the mean time, I'll be checking out some other blogging platforms.

Update: Right after I posted this, everything seemed to get fixed. I gues the moral is don't use any tricks to try and get people to comment on your stoopid blog.

Goodbye Again

2005-03-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

My heart has an endless capacity to break.

With apologies to Robbie Robertson and THE BAND, farewell to the Wacky Wild Woman:

Boards on the window
Mail by the door
What would anybody leave so quickly for?
Melissa
Where have you gone?

The old neighborhood just ain't the same
Nobody knows just what became of
Melissa
Tell me, what went wrong?

Was it somethin' that somebody said?
Mama, I know we broke the rules
Was somebody up against the law?
Honey, you know I'd die for you.

Ashes of laughter
The ghost is clear
Why do the best things always disappear?
Like Melissa
Please darken my door.

Was it somethin' that somebody said?
Honey, you know we broke the rules
Was somebody up against the law?
Honey, you know I'd die for you!

They got your number
Scared and runnin'
But I'm still waitin' for the second comin'
Of Melissa
Baby come back home.

Adult Language

2005-03-27T23:40:00.000-08:00

In an effort to avoid writing anything myself, I have been, um, researching the blogging community.

I have been reading a type of blog that may be described as "adult oriented." Actually, many of them are adultery oriented. What they are is sex blogs. Blogs about sex, often described quite explicitly.

So far I haven't looked at any sex blogs written by guys. Being a guy, it might be enlightening to learn what others are thinking and doing in this arena. On the other hand, call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to sex I am mainly interested in women, and what they're thinking and doing.

And gosh, it's surprising what they are willing to tell, under cover of internet anonymity. Some of them are married and having affairs, which they are keeping secret from their husbands, naturally, but for some reason they just have to tell everyone else in the whole world about it, about how their lovers don't have much to say, but wow can they get everyone's pants off fast once that motel room door closes! And the gymnastics that people can do with only limited equipment -- a double bed, a 3-drawer chest, a Danish modern chair. Let me tell you, it's really been an eye-opener.

I believe some of these things happen in real life, otherwise how to explain the occasional motel-room shooting? And there may be a portion of this filthy stuff that I've been researching that has been written with, shall we say, some poetic license. All I can say is thank you Lord, for these naughty girls and their nasty stories, imagined or real.

That's not what I mean. I mean to make some kind of intellectual comment about the longing that so many of us have to be recognized, to touch and be touched, to reach out and say I'm here, won't somebody hold me, know me, take me. This isn't just a chick thing, either, although male bloggers may be more in touch with their feminine side than regular dudes. Hey, I'm not ashamed.

Some of the messages I read are so plaintive that I want to get right in my car and go wherever I have to go to comfort the poor, horny, lonely writers. And some are so swaggeringly in-your-face and self-assured that I wonder why the women bother to put their inner thoughts on the internet.

Most of you reading this will not remember the CB radio craze of the 1970's, either because you weren't born yet or you were high at the time and have blacked it out from your memories. But there was a period of years when otherwise normal people were using these little low-power two-way radios, mostly in their cars, I think, to talk to complete strangers at random. Big-time high-power amateur radio operators (hams) had been doing this since the thirties, but CB radio was for the masses. It was relatively cheap and easy, and you didn't have to get a license to transmit. So God knows how many good buddies were gettin' their ears on and chatting with anyone and everyone on the air. As a society, we must have been too uptight to run numerous popular magazine articles about this fact, but my guess is a lot of those conversations revolved around s-e-x. Anonymous, safe but oh-so-tantalizingly real-time.

CB radio died out, mercifully. Now it's back to just truckers warning each other about where the Highway Patrol is, and the rest stop hookers. But now we have blogging. No, it's not the same thing. Blogging is a much more noble, intellectual pursuit. Downright dorky, the unenlightened might say. But if the number of raunchy blogs that I have stumbled upon, completely by accident and without intending to, is any indication, there are a lot of amateur pornographers out there.

Of course, an infinite number of monkeys taking an infinite number of meetings and making an infinite number of notes to themselves would eventually conceive, script, fund and produce "Deep Throat." Sure, there'd be some false starts, such as when they cast a monkey in the Linda Lovelace role, but sooner or later there it would be at the Pussycat Theater, up in lights: Deep Throat, an Infinite Monkey Production (leave it alone - I own Infinite Monkey). Given this, maybe it's just a coincidence that I keep coming across all this sexy blogging.

Or maybe not. Here's what I'd like to know: Does writing sexy stuff, uh, get you off? When you write sexy stuff and put it on the internet, are you hoping someone will read it and get off? Would that be fun for you? Or are you (hypothetically, of course) thinking that some day someone will track you down and actually do sexy stuff with you, based on your naughty blog? In the words of the great Cecil B. DeMonkey, What's your motivation?

How I Want You, Part 2

2005-03-24T22:54:00.000-08:00

I wanna want you in all the best ways.

Lift your heart and make every day your lucky day. Hold you safe, Sweet Thing.
Sing you sweetly, love you softly, drink you deeply. It's what I want and I think I will.

But maybe I will take your heart that you give so sweetly, and maybe I'll lock it up, that precious, beating thing, where it never will be seen.

Maybe I will seek until I find, search until I destroy.

And maybe one day you'll find the doors are locked and the house is empty.

I want it to be real. I want it to be right. I want to want you in the best possible way.

How I Want You

2005-03-24T00:12:00.000-08:00

I want you in the worst way.

I want to take you away from your friends, get you out of your comfort zone, make you think about me. When you're walking, driving, reading, talking, I want you thinking about me. I want to know everything right now. I want to talk all night and all next day, explaining me to you, learning you, studying you. I want to know all you've done, every thought you have. I want to go over the books, the movies, the places, the things, the music you love and I want to love them too, and make you love all the things I love, make you see the beauty, feel the groove, laugh at the perfect rhythm and rhyme. I want to take you to my special places and I want them to be your special places. I want you in the worst way.

I want to know who you've fucked and I want you to deny them, deny them all, forsake them for me, and I will forsake all mine for you. I want to own your body, touch you freely whenever and wherever I want, and I want you to want it, want me, arch toward my hand, lean into my arms. I want you to need only me, desperate desire without reserve. I want you in the worst way.

I want you to call me from work and say you want me, that you just can't wait. I want to call you at night and talk dirty, and I want you to like it. I want to wake you in the morning by sucking your toes, licking behind your knee. I want you naked in my arms, naked in my kitchen, naked in my dreams. I want to give you all I have and take all you have. I want you in the worst possible way.

I want to fuck you all afternoon on a hot Sunday, and I want you to fuck me back, vulgar slut, beautiful angel, crying, laughing, moaning. I want to take your heart, your mind, your soul, and never give them back.

Because I want you in the worst damned possible way.

L7

2005-03-18T23:04:00.000-08:00

I am a square.

Just the title of this post makes me a square, coming as it does from the lyrics of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' 1965 frat-rock classic "Woolly Bully." Let's don't be L7, come and learn to dance. What kind of a dork would quote that barnacle-covered old relic?

I guess the term comes from the Beatniks, and it might not have meant literally "square," but rather it might have been meant to describe someone who is squared away in life, all neat edges and perfect alignments, no disarray, no eccentricity, thus no creativity. Of course, there's a good chance the Beats stole it from the blacks, who have always had better slang than white people in this country, often incubating entire sublanguages for months or years before white kids find out about it and "mainstream" it, which means "bring it to the attention of marketers."

Wherever it came from, it evolved to mean dull, old fashioned and out of it. Square.

I used to be painfully shy. Now I'm just shy. There was a time when social situations caused terror to well up in my stomach and chest, and almost come out my mouth. I was insecure and unworthy, and I thought everyone knew it, could read it on me. I thought it made them look away and try not to let me know that they knew. But I knew, and their kindness added to my humiliation. I looked with longing at the ease with which the normal people would laugh and talk and touch each other, making plans for after school, after the game, after the dance, and I had no way in. I was isolated and afraid, a perfect candidate to join a gang. Little boys walkin' away from it all, so cold.

I retreated into music. Huddled over the old kitchen radio after everyone had gone to bed, listening to whatever came through the static. Walking the city, the tiny six-transistor radio pressed to my ear, decades before Sony gave us the Walkman, in splendid, rockin' isolation. Touching no one, no one touching me.

In ninth grade, as if my pain and alienation had been judged not horrible enough, I got my first pair of glasses. Black plastic frames. The stems hooked over and around my ears, like my Uncle Dick's glasses. I wore them only when my parents or the optometrist were there watching. Fuck them. I never knew Buddy Holly, until it was too late. It would be years before John Lennon would come along and make them a hip fashion accessory, and make it cool to read books and write poetry and know about Neitzche and Buddha and painting, before I could say it right out loud: "Fuck them." That's when you fall. When you fall into a trance, sitting on a sofa playing games of chance.

In my shyness I learned to play guitar, by myself in my bedroom, until I dared to come out and show myself. Shielded by my guitar I could join all those people, the ones who were better than me, who pitied me and ignored me. I still couldn't be of them, but I could be with them. And I found that if you don't act shy, it is as if you are not shy. No one knows. No one cares.

You're not hip. You're not square. You are merely the word made flesh. That's the thing to do. Get you someone really to pull the wool with you.

Thanks and apologies to Van Morrison, Paul Simon and Domingo Samudio (Sam the Sham).

Tax Time

2005-03-17T22:29:00.000-08:00

Isn't this cute?

The children want me to pay my taxes.
I guess it's not painful enough that I am expected to fill out complicated forms every year, ratting myself out to a government that can barely even fix a pothole. What do those kids have to do with income tax, anyway? I'm sure the money isn't going to schools.