Merry Christmas

Ever since I stepped left-footed and gimpy into adulthood, with all its awkward realizations about one’s self, and the long term consequences of unfortunate choices made as a youth that still pertain, and the mild gagging sensation as the truth of the hopelessness of our modern situation sinks in…yes, ever since all that started happening, I’ve noticed how people still say Merry Christmas to each other sometime after Dec. 1.  I noticed they say it mostly without cynicism, that’s good, but not without the creeping banality that accompanies “Good Morning” that we say to acquaintances in the office, nevertheless, with a lack of habitual varnish that long ago killed greetings in general, or at least turned them in to zombie language – perfunctory words we say because they are part of a fabric that sustains niceness.

But my point was going to be that it is a kind of spritz in the face with a spray bottle when someone says Merry Christmas, because it’s out of the ordinary, and it reminds me of the season, even if it is somewhat small-talkish, still it is a break from everyday.  I started saying Good Morning to people when I became an old fart and stopped caring what people thought, and started looking for routines and structures to give me security, as the daily nap and afternoon snack did when I was a child. I started using this formal phrase, though I was not altogether comfortable being a grown-up, just because I got tired of being slob who could only say, “hey” to casual people in the hallways.

Now I’ll drop a little “merry Christmas” as I’ve leaving the office afternoons, for a few more days, as a way of expressing sincerity, of acknowledging the Christmas season.  Dang, did I just write an entire blog entry about this?

But this is a cool thing because Christmas is so beset by consumerism and politics, and when a little bit of real Christmas cheer can creep in under the radar, before it becomes illegal or recast into an insult, or eviscerated of its out-of=the ordinariness, well it just makes life a little more bearable, don’t it.

So say it with pride, America.  Merry Christmas. Say it to strangers and to pets. Buck the Texas weather if it doesn’t conjure up holiday cheer, and say those words, Ed.  Or something similar.

Who are these people?

Still out trick-or-treating at 10:00pm?  Really? What’s up with that?  Are these the same people you see in Wal-Mart at 1:00 am when you have a child at home throwing up and you need some Pedia-lyte, and you run out fearing for your child’s brain function? And you run in thinking the place will be empty, amazed that its still open, and see large mom’s with three children in tow, buying toilet paper and snak-pak pudding?

What are they thinking? Oh! They dont have school tomorrow, so they can sleep in! Yes, your four-year-old can be out gathering yet more candy, as if they don’t have enough already, knocking on old people’s doors who have already gone to bed, all in the name of the Halloween candy free-for-all!

Is this just a difference of lifestyle? or is it really the failures of tomorrow, the people we will have to support on welfare because they had no structure, no parental tough-love, no one to occasionally say “no”, no one to say “its time for bed”?

Maybe it’s not the election which matters so much for the direction of our country, not the corporations which determine our country’s decadence, not the celebrities who’s lives matter so much, but our families that are spelling out the end of anything that was admirable in American culture, that are giving in to the disorder that has made France and Sweden the black holes of civility that they have become, that are raising a generation of self-loving, faux-oppressed by society, gizmo-obsessed slackers that the young are becoming.

Just my opinion.

The Trail of Tears

The true story of how the segments of highway between Austin and Abilene came to be known among skunks of central Texas as the Trail of Tears is both mysterious and tragic. The facts have become clouded by time owing to the general distraction and lethargy toward documentation that has prevailed since the events. Indeed, historians have long sought to uncover the dark deeds that surround the highway construction and won it this grim title: the acts of heartless betrayal, the power struggles, the totemistic rituals that now darken the minds of every skunk clan dwelling along the scrubby, barren pass – the details of which are revealed now to you, secret friend, that the spilt blood of so many may not be forgotten.

It began in the days when many youths of the Spilogale skunk clan began increasingly to chafe under the uninteresting lot that their lives had become. Unrest simmered and, like many other cultural shifts, parent-teen arguments brought strife to nearly every household. Shifty groups of adolescents gathered murmuring and sniggering at the edges of the dens. Their growing desperation and the sense of being helplessly trapped gave rise to their cynicism and precarious quests for new experiences. As the malaise wore on, some began referring to themselves as the Lost Generation, a title applied with a mildly wry pessimism at first but later came to haunt the dark-eyed wanderers.
click here to read the rest of the story…

sick of this phrase

You know what phrase I’m sick of?  “Thrown under the bus.”

That’s right, I’m sick of “thrown under the bus.”  At first, I thought this was a hip, catchy sort of phrase that had a certain emotive punch.  It scores rhetorical points by painting a picture, a graphic picture in the mind of the hearer. Violent and visceral.

The problem is that it is always used about one’s self.  “Oh! well then so-and–so threw me under the bus!” I’m hearing this phrase on a regular basis now. Eeeevery time someone gets called down, criticized, reprimanded, or spoken ill of, “Ew, he just thuh-rew me under the bus!  Pity me, o man. I too am among the downtrodden.  I know bitterness, injustice and betrayal.  I have been *THREWN* under the bus!”

So, in my job when I have to tell Shmoe Farquarson that he needs to handle a certain situation himself, and I do it in the presence of one or two others, I have just thrown  him under the bus. No matter that Shmoe really was in need of a little prod. No matter that I have actually suffered incalculable grief and criticism because of errors that Shmoe made, but because I am the manager I take responsibility for it in the eyes of our customer. No matter that I have really decided that Shmoe is a liability to the company and should be fired.  Shmoe has a silver bullet. The role of the martyr.  Because I…

THREW

…him under…

th’ BUS.

Night at a video arcade.

I went to a video arcade today as part of a 13-year-old’s birthday party. And, yeah. You think you already know what I’m going to say.

You probably do, but perhaps you have not been in one for a while. Perhaps you are considering whether this might be a good idea for your child’s upcoming birthday. If so, please hear me. Do not do this.

To enter a modern day video arcade and remain standing upright requires nothing short of a total dismantling of the conscience, and violent suppression of the will. Notions of good and evil must be redefined. Not quite reversed, although that is tempting to say, but intentionally corrupted, imbued with a sense that evil is identified by subtleties of physiognomy and disproportion. For example, in some anime’ stylized games like Time Crisis III, the villain is virtually indistinguishable from the hero except by the angle of the jutting spikes hair, and the fact that villains always seem to be partly mechanized. Just look at these two here. They could be twins.

And what a stupid name for a game. Seriously, my entire life is a time crisis. Why is this name so intriguing ?

Indeed, don’t the kids who play these games live something of a time crisis? As in, do they have too much time on their hands that they’re here playing a silly game?  No homework? No job? Given up trying to find themselves? Spent all their angst? Their crisis is TOO MUCH time, the result of strict child labor laws and lax school standards, and the boomer prosperity, all combining to produce a bored generation with a lot of money.

As I entered the video arcade, I thought I would find a nice car racing game to pass the time. Who knew there was an INSANE TAXI game, or TOKYO GANGSTER RACE game? I did find a couple of nice racing venues with automatic shifting, but what, I asked, is the thrill of this? It is not that different from driving on 290 toward Dripping Springs, or 71 to Bee Caves, which are far more perilous anyway.

Beyond the numerous zombie and military shooting games, off in a corner by itself, alone as if banished, a recluse, a relic, a laughingstock, there stood an old-fashioned game, Galaga, aloof under a lamp post, melancholy as Sam Spade. I played this game when I was young – a gussied-up version of Space Invaders. I could never read in such a place, so I shot down pixelated bug-aliens as I had not done in some decades.

After all the free pizza I could eat, and a Sam’s birthday sugar cookie, and a few long stretches of Galaga, I was ready to go home. All the children and really, the adults too, were shooting zombies with plastic guns, riding simulated motorcycles, simulated snow skis, playing simulated guitars and drums, and simulating face-ripping street fights.

No one asked what this says about our society, or whether there would be a tomorrow. Nobody threw up, or curled up fetal on the ground in horror. Nobody ran through the room shouting “Ichabod! The glory is departed!” But if we were still sane, we would.

My new career

I have some exciting news to share with every one. After much deliberation, I have decided to chuck everything and join the Foo Fighters’ on their upcoming record deal followed by a 200 city tour.  Late this afternoon, I accepted their offer to be the new drummer for the band, though it was a hard choice because we really like Austin.  But I’ll certainly enjoy touring around the world with them and playing “Wheels” every night, the song that I wrote for them last year; I guess they really liked it.

I never knew if I would tour with a band again after leaving Iron Maiden .  I thought my performing days were over after the Maiden Japan tour.  It just seemed like there was no place higher to go – like we had reached the ultimate stage of our development as a band.  I let success go to my head and the crash was hard. Rehab was good for me though, and I’ve found some new material that the FF guys cant wait to record.

So we relocate to Seattle next week, just in time to hit the studio.  We bought this terrific cedar villa high up in the Olympic National Forest that overlooks Puget Sound, though I think we will spend most of our time at the lake house. I’ve already started growing my hair out, and I dug my flannel and sneakers out of the attic.

Yeah, we will miss everyone.  We hate to leave you. But the allure of a life with almost no responsibility whatsoever was just too much to pass up.  I’ll never need to worry about money again, that’s a relief.  And with all the free time that musicians have, I’ll be able to watch my kids grow up and do fun things with them every day – hiking, sailing, hanging out in the cool Seattle scene.  Yessir, Im finally breaking out. I hope you all can come join me on the other side.

Help, I'm alive

I think I could go on living if I never had to have a dental hygienist pick my teeth again with one of those ultra-sonic blaster things.  What a sad, inhuman experience.  Either let my teeth rot out or let me just have eternal-state teeth that never decay, never get coffee stains, never fracture.  What are teeth anyway? Where did they come from, evolutionarily speaking? Are you telling me that random DNA mutations spawned two rows of 18 teeth surrounding a tongue in perfect array?  How many previous rejected hominids had the teeth in alternate configurations, like right in the middle of the roof of their mouths, and were continually biting their tongues?  Every 10 seconds they were cursing, holding their mouths.  And so they failed to survive.  Does Jesus have teeth now?  Those funny little bones, disconnected from other bones in their gummy substrate. Does one think of God having teeth, and if you saw him now, would they be the whitest teeth you ever saw? Did Jesus get cavities, because the water was not fluorinated back then? Does he still have them, and if so why? Does taking on the form of a man mean having these semi-random bones jutting around in one's mouth? And were his teeth perfect and straight, or would he require braces today?  And if they were crooked and over-bitten, or if, say, three teeth had to be pulled during the course of his life, are they all back in place now that he is in the state of his glorification? What would he say to the horrid procedure of having plaque blasted off using ultra-sonic sound waves, sending blinding jolts of paroxysm through his frame?  Would this be part of being "acquainted with sorrow" today? Would he submit to having a crown put on his teeth? Would he find it ironic, given that he laid down all crowns when he left heaven to come to earth?  Would it remind him of the "crown of glory and honor" to come?  When we cast our crowns at his feet, will that include the one I will be getting next month on my #18 molar?  How much more prosthesis will I permit to be added to my mortal coil?  When a person has artificial teeth, and maybe a knee joint or two, is he some percentage less human?  A little more like The Borg of Star Trek, The Next Generation?  And does the natural repugnance of anatomical replacement stop us from proceeding with the horror? No. But consider this question: if a ship, let's say some clipper, gets some pieces replaced, then more pieces, until finally every piece of the ship has been replaced, is it still the same ship?  Can it bear the same name?  If so, then what is the ship's identity? It cannot have been those particular parts that made up the first ship.  So what happens when a human being is replaced by artificial parts?  Does the plastic, silicone, enamel, steel or whatever become me?  Is it identified by my name - like you could take my elbow and say this is John Common's elbow, but what if it was a steel replacement elbow?  No, you would say it's foreign, alien, not really JC's elbow. So, if science makes it possible to replace every part of a person, will that person cease to exist?  My teeth are now approximately 10% foreign matter. But I think I would rather have no teeth than have one of those ultra-sonic picks used on my teeth again.

Twas beauty killed the beast

OK, now that everyone thinks I'm waaayy too fond of drinking, let me divert your attention to more a wholesome subject.

After a frustrating day - I mean, a day that was loaded, permeated, defined by frustration, a day ordained to frustration as if the stars foretold it, a day like 12.12.12 devoted to the destruction of the earth - and I am bombarded by the ugliness of people and the futility of the dumb stuff Im involved in, and the paltriness of the modern world, and the foolishness of children, and the disobedience of pets, and flat tires and dead batteries, then I watch a movie like American Beauty.  And it tells me that the world is so full of beauty, so full in fact that one of the main characters almost cant take it, and his heart is about to cave in, it's so full. And I remember, Oh yeah, there's also beauty, the true knowledge I apprehend through a pleasurable medium.

Now, this is a movie panned by Christian critics.  And it has just enough sexuality that I can't, within pleasant Christian circles, recommend it for fear of causing offense.  And it presents a man with whom the audience is sympathetic, doing very bad things like smoking pot and coaxing an underage girl, but we want him to do it, in our secret naughty intentions (or at least my secret naughtiness, smoking pot with him, rejoicing as he tells off his wife and as their marriage devours itself).  But the redemption is there, and it is almost too subtle, but it is there.

At the end of the film, beauty is hailed, and evil is downcast.  Beauty in the form of love, freedom, virginity, humanity, male and female forms, music.  Bad things are bad: violence, insults, unkindness, oppression, falsehood.  Redemption and then death, enlightenment followed by judgment through natural outworking of bad choices. Amazing.

And after a bad day, a film now 10 years old, dismissed by many, is able to preach to me an old message, a welcome message: the world is full of beauty, overlooked in little things, and we have to slow down to see them. You may have to take up a hobby like home video taping in order to make yourself slow down. But the frustration is not the end. Beauty is the end - look for it, they tell me, slow down.  See.  Look closer. Do something, your own preferred art form.

Food that lies

This one is for Eli

I scooped out a bowl of ice cream, but, as usual, problems arose. It was all wrong. I got angry. I felt like cursing, and unfortunately I said some things I wouldn't say in normal conversation. I said, more to myself really, that things just weren't the same. But I guess I said it out loud.  And an argument ensued.

Things have been in decline for some years, and the springtime of food enjoyment has increasingly succumbed to an autumnal starkness. Indeed, I think many of my favorite foods have been colluding to rebel in some kind of gustatory usurpation. But I could be just imaging that.

My points were at least two-fold, and so I felt I had the stronger argument. One, the whole paltry experience didn't last very long. Oh, I tried! Yes, I tried to slow down, make it last. I exercised various enhancement techniques - chocolate sauce, novelty spoons, etc.  I tried to be sensitive, understanding. I don't think I'm being unreasonable.

But far more incriminating:  the vanilla cream and Oreo chunks were a lie. It made promises, but didn't keep them, not authentically.  Eventually, I began to suspect it had been lying to me for years, and I did not realize it. "How long has this been going on?" I demanded.  It was speechless when cornered. "Have I been blinded all this time? Where is the satisfaction you promised? Why am I still unhappy?  No, stop.  Dont tell me that. Life is not sweet and creamy."

I discovered candy's impotence years ago. Shortly afterward followed all cake. Twinkies and Ding Dongs were just a childhood fling, puppy love, a gradeschool crush, and a wry smile appears across my face at their memories now. Pie? Well...pie and I go way back, but its still a mood thing. But at some point all sweets became uninteresting to me - I just couldn't take the lies any more. Sweetness? Life is not sweetness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

Meat and vegetables, they don't lie. But sometimes I dont have the patience for their hearty companionship, their constant summons to celebration. I wasn't going to admit it, but I will - I have been secretly enjoying many alternative foods for some years: sushi, mushrooms, wasabi peas, jerky. But while not lying per se, we do not always....*sigh*  How do I put it?  It's like we are not speaking the same language, and eating becomes perfunctory, obligatory. The life, the zest is gone. Ardor cools.

But one friend I know. She can be harsh, the old boot.  And she lies, yes, she's a renown liar. But one anticipates her lies. She's a cheater, she loves and leaves. A regular whore. In the end, she's no better than cake or ice cream for her transience. But she speaks my language. We communicate like no other because she speaks as if she knows of discouragement, weariness, disillusionment, though what can she possibly know of these?  Still, our fellowship, our voluntary fellowship, is a refuge from the storm. For once, I feel understood. She lets me be myself. Perhaps you've met her.

Thoughts on seeing Roger Clemens indicted, though I dont really follow professional baseball

Performance Enhancement. Does anyone else notice the emerging double standard between the required total abstinence of athletes and the rest of the culture?  When just about everyone is getting some kind of work done, athletes are facing not only legal troubles for doping up, but the increasing pressure of cultural acceptance of enhancements of every sort.

And we are all competing, aren't we?  Just not professionally.  Young girls are competing for the attention of men, and they are spending zillions on breast implants, tans, nose jobs, jaw modifications, artificial dimples, and even Botox, according to this article.  School children are increasingly taking Ridilin, mood enhancers, and mental stimulants to perform in school.  Adults are taking the same drugs in ever increasing numbers, and getting the same body-altering procedures.

Roger Clemens must be thinking about now, as he considers his indictments by Congress for doping and lying about it, "Why not?  Enhancement is accepted at other common levels of society.  Why not athletics?"

Is it because of concern for fairness in the competition?  Maybe (then why not just let all athletes use steroids?)  Is it because steroids are unhealthy?  We're supposed to say yes, and they are but that's not the reason.

Is it because of a desire for pure man vs. man contest, pitting the highest against each other?  let the best man win?  test man's unassisted aptitude, that the winner may know the glory of his achievement, that the crowds may be inspired by the virtue and strength of humanity? What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, and all that?  that the culture may be lifted up as they behold greatness?  I hope so.

But America is currently double-minded about drugs.  Legalize them?  or keep fighting them?  As attitudes continue to grow lax towards drugs, the issue of athletic steroids will become more and more tiresome.

Real sign

I really took these pictures at a home for mentally retarded people.

Gun. Cow. Hat.

I interact with many people in my travels around Texas.  80% of them look like this.

The Hilton Hotel

How it is that I find myself at the Whitten Inn in Abilene, TX, again, would require an explanation fraught with banal details regarding a shipment of product received in torn and soggy boxes, which I am here to salvage if possible.

The more interesting story is my experience at the Hilton Hotel in Dallas, where I was all week for training.

For 3 days and 3 nights I was in the belly of a whale.  Monday evening I drove through 3 hours of torrential downpour which only let up on the southern outskirts of Dallas. I was thus already frazzled. I took solace in the comfort that awaited me at a hotel of renown, a tower of luxury and prestige, proudly standing at the intersection of two multi-lane expressways north of town. Imagine my disappointment then to find that the highway exit took me to nothing resembling my hotel. After circling through backstreets I concluded I had the wrong address and got back on a highway.  I called the hotel to ask for directions - the conversation went like this:

me: I need directions to the hotel

operator:  OK, sir. I will be glad to help you with that.

[computer keys clicking]

operator: ....ok, lessee here...uh....ok

[more computer noises]

operator:  where are you coming from?

me:  Im going west on 635, approaching the tollway.

operator:  OK...let me just...[clackety clack]...OK, if you're coming north on LBJ...

me:  no, I'm going west on 635 or LBJ if you like.  Approaching the tollway

operator:  West on 635?  Ah...hold on a minute...

[15 seconds passes]

operator:  OK, from the tollway, you just exit....

me:  No, I'm going west on 635.  What is the hotel address?

operator:  Our address...oh, hold on  [paper rattling]...I have it...here...I think...5410 LBJ Freeway.  It's at the Lincoln Centre.  Do you know where the Lincoln Centre is?

me:  No, just...  Look.  Are you at the hotel yourself?

operator:  [silence]

me:  You work there, right?  How do you...I mean, you drive there every day...right?  Can you put someone on who knows their way around?

operator:  [computer clacking]  The Lincoln Centre, it's on LBJ Freeway

me:  I know, but there's no exit there.  Where do I exit?

operator:  [computer clacking]  Let me pull up a map here...

me:  WOULD you just PUT someone on who knows how to get there, please?

operator:  Hold on, I'll put you through to the front desk.

[phone rings for 30 seconds with no answer]

And then I hung up.  Amazingly, having never been there, not working there, without any clue about how to penetrate the bureaucracy of highways to get to there, I finally found a way in from the back - the only way in apparently.

The front desk clerk lady gave me a key card and I went up to the 7th floor to my room, bundled with a suitcase, laptop bag over my shoulder, 4 loose items on hangers cutting into one free finger, and my key card.  Well.  The key did not work - there was no green light, no red light, no noise.  I spun the card every different direction, frontwards, backwards.  No good.  Feeling my eyes haggard with exhaustion, I trundled back down to the front desk with my luggage, and briskly told a different clerk that my key didn't work.  He gave me another.  To no one's surprise, I went all the way up to find again the key did not work, and came all the way down again.  This time the only clerk was yet another man, this time of non-English-speaking lineage, which added a new complication.  He gave me two keys, just in case and said in a thick Indian accent, "There is a courtesy phone by the elevator, so you can call if you still have trouble, sir."

I knew as he gave the keys to me that they wouldn't work.  Why am I bothering to do this again?  I should just insist on another room now, I thought.  Or a maintenance escort.  But ever non-confrontational, I went back up.

Glory.  Neither of the two keys opened my door.  I called the front desk for someone to come up and let me in, and I sat on the lonely bench in the elevator alcove.  In 5 minutes, a man came along wearing a security uniform.

"Are you going to let me in my room?"

"Yes sir.  I 'm not sure what's wrong."

"Are you going to fix the door?  Because it needs batteries or something.  You can't just let me it, because then I can't leave.  The door needs to be fixed."

When we arrived at the door, he asked for my key cards.  He put the first one in, and the light turned green, and there was the whirring of a tiny motor, and the door opened.  He smiled,

"Sir, there's this little arrow on the card, and you have to..."

"I did exactly that multiple times with 4 different keys!"

And so, I tumbled into my room and shortly thereafter into my bed, which was a giant marshmallow.

Over three days, I spent some time, not much, in the lobby and the bar, and a breakfast cafe. Perhaps it was the deep circles under my eyes that drew everyone's gaze upon me.  Or perhaps that I was the only one in the entire hotel who wore jeans to sit in the bar and have a beer.  All the other AT&T Convention attendees were in suits and ties, even after hours, even at the bar.

By day two, I began to notice things.  The sadness of the hotel employees.  The skanky, starving ducks in the water fountain.  The 40 foot ceiling in the lobby supported by massive columns three feet in diameter.  These columns were not only hollow (I discovered by knocking on them), but were made of something like 1/4 inch pressboard wrapped in wallpaper.  I noticed immediately that the omnipresent music was constantly set to techno-dance-pop, frequently so gimpy and childish and throbbing as to be embarrassing to be in the same room with.  Decidedly non-Hilton-ish, I thought.  More like Studio 54.  One expected a laser show at any moment.  I asked an older woman in the gift shop what she made of the crazy music that was pumped in louder than normal into her tiny little space.  She laughed nervously and urged me to share my thoughts with the front desk.

The most (only?) redeeming encounter of the entire week was having my shoes shined by a black man at a shoe-shine stand.  Since I changed to sneakers after the first day, I handed him my dress shoes as I went to my seminar Thursday morning (today? seems so long ago).  He respectfully said they would be ready when we broke for lunch.  When I went to pick them up, I saw to my astonishment that these 20-year-old Johnston-Murphy's had not looked any better on the day I bought them.  I had seen him earlier applying all his force and artistry to another man's shoes - how he polished and buffed, and pulled his towel across the man's feet quickly with both hands.  I regret very much not wearing my black shoes then, just so I could sit and watch him.  He handed my shoes back to me in a recycled plastic grocery bag and thanked me. I gave him 6 on the $5 he charged, but in that moment I tell you I was in the presence of one of the last of a dying kind - not just shoe shiners, but anyone who humbly, non-self-consciously renews, restores, takes the broken and binds it up - who serves this small remaining segment of a culture of manners and civility and dress, besotted as it is by its corporate evils.

I could sing this man's trade.  He doesn't know that a guy now 150 miles away is blogging about him, celebrating his skill, his simplicity.  I just want to weep with joy at this discovery - to have a pair of shoes that actually need shining, to pay a skilled artisan a pittance to ply a nearly lost trade.  He helps me be a gentleman, he helps me hold back, in the smallest way, the dunking tide of informality.  He spurs me, he shows me a door to walk through saying, "Looking nice, sir, you should do it more often."  Why wouldn't I hire the services of a shoe shiner every chance I get now?

And thus, the whale coughed me up on the beach, and I now run to Nineveh.

...not that I have some strong party affiliation...

...no, I was a lifelong Republican (except for the 1996 race in which I voted for the ultra-hyper-conservative Constitution Party, which was a mistake) until 2008 when I proudly voted for Obama, and am still proud of that fact. The reasons are too many, and the tsunami of anti-Obama propaganda makes it almost impossible to get a word in to explain why.

On the current propaganda tour, last week I heard a guy blaming Obama for the oil spill in the gulf, that the administration didn't respond fast enough. I am flabbergasted.  If the federal government had swooped in on day one and

A S S U M E D   C O N T R O L

they would be complaining of Obama's trigger happy bent on controlling all of Time and Space, godlike in his aspirations etc.  But the administration WAS actively involved, from 'day one.'  Everyone who has been paying attention knows that.

More examples of propaganda:

• The altercation where a boat tangled with an Israeli naval blockade, was called a group of "terrorists" in my hearing, and another boating party is openly planning another attempt, apparently. But it was clearly a relief mission with a US representative onboard bringing medical supplies, food and stuff.  They were armed but not terrorists. It blew up and lots of people died.  A big mix up.
• Friends of Obama want to build a 13-story mosque on the site of the Twin Towers.  Who can say what this is about, except that Obama is behind it, because we all know he's secretly a Muslim...even though he gave the most solid profession of gospel-loving, washed-in-the-blood Christian faith any presidential candidate has ever given.
• Obama openly supports the invasion of the United States by foreign powers.  Boom.
• Obama is selling the souls of our nation's children to Satan by signing a bill to extend unemployment benefits, which have been expired for about 6 months.
• Obama...oh, was I too vague a moment ago?  No I was perfectly clear: Obama is devising his evil machinations to allow foreign forces to invade Amer'ca.  He has mobilized, he has activated, he has unleashed his massive judicial monolithic army of cyborgs the rain down like invading dragons from the sky on the noble state of Arizona for their new anti-immigration law, "which most Uh'mer'cans support."  They say.

NOW.

Remember, the same sorts of unbridled, loose-cannon rhetoric was leveled against Bush for 6 years by the crazy, propagandizing left. I saw websites and read chain-emails accusing Bush of being Hitler reincarnated, picturing him with a Hitler mustache, hand lifted in a Sieg Heil sign, accused of a new colonialism, a mass-murderer, baby-killer, war-monger, conspiratorialist etc.  I saw idiotic bumper stickers declaring things like "Bush is a punk-ass chump" - brilliant public discourse and focusing on the issues, I said at the time.

I denounce all of this, on either side.

But how can real dialog take place?  Where and when?  Who listens?  Who will change their minds in the face of a stronger argument?  Will they not burrow deeper?  Plug their ears and chant "we shall overcome" no matter what rationality and reason may be presented?  No evidence of any sort can convince most of the public.  Politics has become religion, nay more, a holy war.  We are right, and they are wrong, and don't forfeit your soul by believing the "lies" of the other side.

I watched Hotel Rawanda again this week. I recognized the same sorts of heated rhetoric and mindless allegiance among the Hutu's against the Tutsi's in that movie as we hear today from so many quarters.

This, this is one more reason I say we walk in a vale of tears.  So many voices, so many passions, so little reason.

Shrill Republicans

Among the examples of Republican fly-off-the-handle-ism in an apparent attempt to gain the media spotlight, I heard Newt Gingrich howling yesterday on Fox News Radio about how the Senate approved the extension of jobless benefits to millions of people still out of work due to the long recession.

His reason for objection? The debt dollars that will have to be shouldered by future generations.

So now Im wondering which is worse: the expenditure of billions and billions on war in the Middle East, or of a much smaller amount to families (remember the families, Newt? your constituency?) whose children will benefit during the short term while their mom's and dad's find work? 

I wonder if the assumption on the part of Gingrich is that most of those remaining unemployed are simply deadbeats who want to live off the government. Unfortunately, I personally know too many honest men and women who want to work but cant, and there is still too much talk of layoffs nationwide to assume this.

I would even venture to say that some of those children might be willing to take on a little more national debt to get them through the worst recession since the 30's so they can even have a future.

But in comparison to the spending on unnecessary war sponsored largely by the formerly Republican congress...well, there is no comparison.

I take back my denigration of Abilene, Texas

Yes, I take back my thoughts as I drove out of town this morning about the paucity of decent restaurants, the hopeless tangle of discontinuous potholed streets, and how I lamented the forlorn downtown area void of any accommodation for visitors in the way of quaint dining rooms with atmosphere, the absence of historical sights or night life.

I take back my execration of the narrow spectrum of radio stations, my grief at especially high obesity rate, my consternation at the beer selection in the hotel lounge.  How the sushi restaurant was in a converted Dairy Queen, how the few small college campuses were unsung and essentially invisible, how the one familiar city sight/sound of pounding bass hop-hop vehicles managed to interrupt my erstwhile quiet evening.

I take it all back because of an unheard of privilege granted silently to me by the motel patrons.  I speak, dear reader, of the Whitten Inn of Abeline Texas. Where the motto is, "sleep at the Whitten and you'll purr like a kitten."  Deer and antelope play nearby. The sun sets late, unobstructed by mountains, mesas, rocks or rills, yea, of landscape of any sort.

But when I stayed the first night at the Whitten, room 165 on the C wing, I noticed not a single car other than mine on the entire wing. I had the entire wing to myself. Dozens of other travelers stayed at the Whitten Inn, but none were on my wing. Why? I wondered.  It was wonderfully quiet.

As it turned out, I stayed at the Whitten Inn the following night, indeed tonight (I type in the past tense though I am writing this blog using the free wireless internet connection provided. Maybe I should switch to present tense). When I checked in, I asked the girl behind the counter, "Was it coincidence that my wing was empty last night, and that you are putting me there again tonight?"

She replied, "We are careful about who we put in the C Wing.  Truckers and stuff, we put in A and B, but business customers we usually put in C."

Am I, newly employed, to be the happy recipient of this decidedly non-democratic lodging scheme?  It is 9:00 here, and again my wing is EMPTY except for me.  What La Quinta or Best Western would do such a thing?

To make things even better, the gave me vouchers for 1 free drink from the hotel lounge, and a free breakfast - not continental, a real eggs-and-bacon breakfast.  And the rooms are spacious, clean and smell good.

I gripe plenty about bad things in the world, but let me praise the Whitten Inn, where I get all this for $62 per night.

Another bathroom conversation

I observed several months ago that men are developing a new language of etiquette consisting of non-verbal signals - a language used mainly in public toilets. With apologies to any female readers, here is another glimpse into the evolving silent idiom of the privy.
---
Scene: A restaurant.

Man 1: Enters. Face red, walks smartly to Urinal 1, unzips. (Translation: I'm so tense from that performance evaluation. I can't wait to get a beer and relax.)

Man 1: Stands uneasy for a moment at Urinal 1. Looks around. Skitters to Urinal 3 as belt buckle rings.  (Translation: If someone comes in, I'd hate to be standing next to the sink.)

[Time passes. The room is silent as a tomb.]

Man 1: Examines the tiles and chrome pipes before him; tries to forget why he is here. (Translation: Please just pee, so I can join my friends. Why cant I just pee? Jeez, I'm not 13 anymore.)

[High heels in the hallway outside. Ladies room door opens and closes.  In less than a minute, a toilet flushes far away. The same high heels again that eventually fade away.]

Man 1: Head hanging low, eyes closed, thinking about Niagara Falls.  (Translation: Just relax, old boy. There's a good fellow. You can do it. Yes. Come on, come on! Oh Danny Bo-oy! the pipes, the pipes are ca-lling!)

[Enter Man 2. Goes into Stall 1. Slams the door behind him, but not drawing the latch. The door creaks back open and rests against his back.]

Man 1:  Stretches neck to the side until vertebrae pop, eyes roll up to the ceiling. (Translation: Oh no, oh no, oh no! I cant pee with someone else in here! Unless perchance he flushes the toilet, and the toilet is one of those long flushers. Then I may have a chance. Come on, dude. Help me out here. Please be a thorough hand washer.)

Man 2 in Stall 1:  Stall door bangs and is left half open. Quick zipper down in 0.2 seconds and belt buckle tinkling.  (Translation: Hhaaaah! I'm dying here. I gotta pee like a racehorse!)

[No noise from either men.]

Man 1: Places one hand against the cool tile, leaning forward, jaws clenched. Recites quadratic formula to distract self.  (Translation: That's it. I'll never pee again. Not until I can escape ALL humanity, far from listening ears, from the toxic rays of watching eyes. Yes, yes! Away! To a place of seclusion! To an abandoned bungalow in some reclusive Montana wilderness...)

Man 2 in Stall 1: Heavy sigh, a pause and then, the sound of a thick stream, pouring forth with might. It sounds unearthly to Man 1, like a frothing vortex. Man 2 passes gas freely and without reserve. Sigh of contentment.  (Translation:  Damn skippy.)

Man 1: Frustrated, zipping pants loudly and going to the sink to wash, pretending to be finished. Shakes water from hands unhurriedly. Languidly pulls out paper towels, dries hands and strolls to the door. (Translation: He's probably some college student, virile, carefree and frank, probably been drinking plenty already. Me, I get stage fright. I'll pretend to have already peed, stand outside, and come back in when he leaves.)

[Man 1 leaves as vortex of Man 2 peeing continues unabated.]

[Outside, four minutes pass in agony. Man 1 reads flyers on bulletin board feigning perfect thralldom at the announcements of macramé lessons and local band performances.]

[Man 2 finally exits visibly happier, stronger, smarter. Catches faintest sideways glance at Man 1, knowing his sorry dilemma, smirking arrogantly. Man 1 reenters the men's room. Skitters across to Urinal 1. Waits. Finally reaches over, turns on cold water faucet at sink.]

Man 1: Holds breath, eyes glaze, whimpers audibly, euphoric like a penitent viewing The Pieta. Urinates, first slowly, then with unstoppable and profound vigor. Shouts out "YES!"  Pounds the tile wall twice in triumph. Wipes away a grateful tear with free hand. (Translation: Bless the Lord, Oh my soul, and all that is within me...)  Finishes. Sings out, boldly now, open mouthed, in full operatic voice, "Oh Danny Boy, the pipes! The pipes are calling!" Plays a fast drumbeat on the stall door with the flats of his hands. Turns toward sink and saunters victoriously to lavatory, washes, dries hands like Alexander in the palaces of Susa. Combs hair lightly with fingers, continues to hum Danny Boy. Jumps in the air, clicks heals together. Grabs the door handle.

Man 3 in Stall 2:  Clears throat. Flushes discretely.  (Translation: Nice weather were having, eh?  Oh, I say old fellow. You forgot to flush.)

To see part 1, on The Development of Neo-Bathroom Idiom, follow this link
----

Where was the Government??

A mysterious, almost subliminal question came to my mind when I read the story about Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old girl who, like her older brother when he was 17, and with her parents support, took off to sail around the world in her sailing craft. And she is doing it ALONE.

Hey, a voice said, That's crazy. Who are these parents, and how did they get away with it? I wondered, did they have to sneak down to the coast? Were CPS agents following them? Will they be prosecuted, serve jail time, the children placed in foster care when Abby returns?

It actually made the news when she sent a distress signal and she lost satellite phone communication. Her last blog entry said her boat was tossing around in 30 foot waves. A rescue team set out to try and find her, and Thursday night her ship was spotted and she appears to be OK.

But the voice, the voice...  "They're so busted" it said. "Surely they knew the laws beforehand, and they chose to break them."

Her mother's comment was, "Life is dangerous. If she stays here, she could die in a car accident." We can't let our lives be ruled by the chance of danger. Better to choose your own mode of death, and let it be glorious, than to be mutilated in a random, inhuman car accident.

Then it occurred to me.

She's on the OCEAN. The government doesn't have jurisdiction! That's how they can get away with it. That's how people escape the NannyState we live in - car seats, bicycle helmets, seat belts, gun licenses, warning labels, coffee temperature regulations - screw all that! The US Federal Government cannot tell us what to do, as are so used to, outside it's borders, in territory that no one owns - the sea.

Suddenly my reason kicked in, my opinion changed, like one roused from a deep slumber, like one emerging from a cave to see the sun for the first time, blinded by its brightness, but experiencing true reality, alive, heart pulsating, born again! "Yes!" I said, "Yes! Sail, Abby Sunderland, be free! Face the danger!  Let no one look down on your youthfulness! Society will say you can't, you shouldn't, you might get hurt, you could drown. They, from their La-Z-Boys, before the glowing light of their televisions, sated, soft, rubbing lotion on their hands. But perhaps society has lost its ability to be reckless because the Guv'mint has been protecting us too long, because we've learned not to tolerate sickness or pain, because we run to the medicine cabinet at the slightest headache, or get expensive treatments for the first hint of a wrinkle.  Go! Run to the sea! Risk it all and be human! Do something extraordinary and renounce the Big Brother state with all its intrusive protections! She has won my support, my admiration. Let the world keep silent.

A Key for Understanding "A Serious Man"

I have heard two kinds of responses to the latest Coen movie.  1) misunderstanding of the film and attempting an interpretation which is off base and 2) confession of total befuddlement.

Here it is. The point of the movie is Uncertainty, from beginning to end. I am certain of it. Any theological talk is just more stuff that we are uncertain about. We are uncertain about virtually everything in the movie, and the Coens are showing the frustration that comes from uncertainty, not trying to answer any questions, not relieving the tension, not resolving the story. They are just letting us stew in uncertainty in an entertaining, movie-world, story. A Jewish sort-of response to uncertainty is, "just accept it", and that's all we are left with.


Here are some of the ways that this theme is presented.

1. Larry Gopnick is a physics teacher. In the two classroom scenes, he is describing first the so-called Schrodinger's Cat experiment and then later Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. These are well known problems in physics that rest on uncertainty.
2. His brother Arthur's "Mentaculus" is a probability map of the universe. It apparently works because Arthur uses it to win at gambling, but he is caught and, combined with a sodomy charge, gets in trouble with the law.
3. I probably should start with this: the opening scene with the couple speaking Yiddish and the old man said to be a ghost (dybbuk). At the end of this scene, the viewer is left with the question - was the old man a dybbuk or not? It was never resolved. Has God cursed them (as the woman said), or not? It seems at the end, that yes, whether he was a dybbuk or not, God has cursed them because either they are visited by the dead, or she has stabbed and possibly killed a great man in their community. Either way, they are ruined. The movie never comes back to it. You the viewer are left uncertain about it.
4. The opening quote by Rashi, even before the scene with the Yiddish couple, says "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you."
5. Words to the song that shows up a few times: "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, dont you want somebody to love..." Larry says "...a bolt from the blue...everything I thought was one way turns out to be another." Uncertainty again.
6. In his argument with Clive over the bribe money we first hear that actions have consequences - not just physics. Morally. Clive says, "mere surmiser. Very uncertain." There it is again.
7. Clive's father confronts Larry in the driveway with a humorous no-win lawsuit situation that ends with "accept the mystery."
8. There is talk of morality, yet the phrase is mentioned in various contexts "but I didn't do anything."
9. None of the three rabbis are able to help him, though the first two at least offer mild "be positive" advice similar to the quote from Rashi above.  But the point is that theologians don't have answers, and no longer ask the questions themselves, and encourage people not to get uptight about the questions.
10. Arthur "never complains" we hear early in the film. Larry wonders if its wrong to complain about paying for Sy Ableman's funeral. Toward the end, Arthur can hold it no longer, and bursts into a torrent of complaining that Hashem has never given him anything. This is a motif, but doesn't really illuminate uncertainty.
11. The frustrating story of the Goy's Teeth - there is no point. These questions are like a toothache - you feel it for a while, then it goes away. This is the second rabbi. Larry wants answers definitively but he's told God doesn't owe us answers. The rabbi is OK with this, but Larry is not. Perhaps his own study of uncertainty should inform him.
12. Can any one doubt that the Coen's smoke pot?
13. The tenure committee "doesn't make moral judgments".
14. Even at the end, though you may strongly suspect things, you dont actually know what happens:
• dont know if the tornado killed everybody
• dont know if the teacher got the door unlocked before the tornado came
• dont know if Fagel ever got his money back
• dont know what the doctor found - he just wanted Larry to come in to talk about it
• dont know who was sending the anonymous letters to the tenure committee (they continued to come in after Sy died)
• dont know if Arthur was really guilty of sodomy
• dont know where the property line actually is on Larry's yard (the attorney who was going to illuminate it died of a heart attack before he could tell what he found)

I think the Coen's are full of questions and dont pretend to have any answers.

Afraid

• I am not afraid to think differently than everyone else outside my own community, and occasionally than those within my community
• I am not afraid to seem old fashioned, quirky, out-of-step or mixed up, though I value my community enough to adjust if those I respect the most tell me I should
• I am not afraid to assert that it is modern sensibilities that are wrong, not my old-fashioned ways
• I am not afraid to make my dog stay outside during the afternoon or overnight, or to throw a shoe at the cat if it wont stop yowling.
• I am not afraid to have a counter-cultural home where the TV is rarely on, where we sit down to dinner together many nights of the week, where famous paintings are on the walls and we sometimes read the Bible at the dinner table
• I am not afraid to drive an older car and be perceived as one of those guys that just does not smell right in the nostrils of SUV drivers
• I am not afraid to tell my children No on occasion to sleepovers, late nights out, immoderate expenditures, too-sloppy clothing, leisure time on the computer, carousing at the mall, certain movies

• I am afraid of appearing to be a dotard, a profligate or a buffoon before my kids, or just out of touch, too set in his ways, unable to consider new ideas
• I am afraid of standing firm so long that I alienate those I love
• I am afraid that my car will break down on the side of the road because I waited too long to get the transmission fluid changed
• I am afraid of the Beast.  By that I mean the vast political/economic system that eats those critters who wander or straggle out into daylight too far behind the rest - those who run afoul of the powerful or have too much financial exposure and miss one payment or fail to fill out some required form and find themselves unable to reenter because of perceived delinquency and a record with a red flag in some computer marking him a risk.
• I am afraid of seductive influences that lure my kids away into sensuality, self-seeking, cynicism, permissiveness, relativism, mammon

Man, the human

Things that demonstrate that man is still human:

1. using utensils to eat real food. Or using tools of any sort
2. handwriting and arithmetic, and using them to write a letter to your mother or a friend, or calculate the perimeter of your backyard
3. locomotion by any organic medium
4. making pies
5. making music with hands, feet or breath, music that does not involve programming
6. reading words on a page
7. getting a hair cut
8. elimination
9. looking at a piece of good art, waiting there patiently until you begin to get it, having the lights come on, noticing things you didn't see at first, feeling thanks in your bosom toward the artist, coming away with something new in your mind about human existence.
10. throwing a ball with a dog in an open field, even if the dog doesn't bring the ball back, or throwing a shoe at a cat
11. drinking water. Or other real drinks like beer.
12. burning a candle, or burning anything for that matter
13. crying, trembling, hiding, greeting strangers on the sidewalk, wishing there was someone around, 
14. becoming familiar with the stars and trying to get your mind around them in a kind of embrace but ultimately finding you are unable to do so, yet feeling their greatness and your earth-boundedness
15. finding the harmony in your head to a note played by strange tone you hear somewhere but cant tell where its coming from; humming the note out loud, like the two-notes in a train whistle
16. drying off with a nice towel after a shower and shaving with some kind, any kind, of razor, it doesn't matter what kind, and combing your hair into a nice part and facing others having tended your own garden, not just wandering into public like an animal
17. I'm sure there are others. Why not leave a 'comment' with your own additions? 

The cage

Below is a link to a new story. It may be the best thing I have written: I only say that to get you to read it.

The Cage - a Faulknerian exercise.

A movie called Brothers

How did it get on my Netflix queue, I dont remember, but it is a movie you need to see. Somebody must have mentioned it, and I never heard of it again. Nobody talks about it. Nobody raves as if it were a 'must see.' But a more human movie you will not find in the last 24 months, perhaps longer.

A soldier goes off to war in Afghanistan while his new-released loner convict brother remains behind and slowly regains acceptance with the family stateside. While dad experiences unimaginable things as a soldier, life goes on back home. Tobey Maguire's portrayal of the returned war hero is magnificent. You'll remember him in this movie and replace the Spiderman association. Natalie Portman has finally become a woman and has a role in which to be one, though I have to say she is not a great actor, and though given a chance to be one here merely comes off as an eye-candy placeholder. Jake Gyllenhaal (sp?) is a flawless no-count brother and is a candidate for some movie hall of fame (I saw him in Brokeback Mountain recently, and though I found the gay cowboy stuff unbelievable the acting was great).

I can't say more without giving away the plot, but you will find not so much cliches in this movie, but familiar themes in all their human garb. A good story with painful scenes. No, not a landmark, but important. Not Academy material, but compelling (...er, whatever that means). And you are left to think seriously as the credits role about matters of real, here-and-now import: war, family, fidelity, children, trust, healing, brotherhood.

On editing your own work

This was too good to keep to myself. From an editorial by Benjamin Percy in Poets & Writers.

"So much of revision, I've discovered, is about coming to terms with that word: gone. Letting things go. When revising, the beginning writer spends hours consulting the thesaurus, replacing a period with a semicolon, cutting adjectives, adding a few descriptive sentences - whereas the professional writer mercilessly lops off limbs, rips out innards like party streamers, drains away gallons of blood, and then calls down th lightning to bring the body back to life."

He and others quote Faulkner's heartless writing axiom: Kill your darlings.

Definition of 'bathos'

In this newsworthy video by CNN, a small group of girls is doing something simultaneously potentially admirable and utterly banal. Flyers are printed, buttons sported, refrigerator magnets distributed, contracts drawn up, signatures solicited. What is their cause? Is it stay sexually pure till marriage? Avoid drugs? Discourage drunk drivers?

No.

These girls are saying "no" to tanning before the prom. "No!" they are saying, "NO! You will not take my soul! NO!" to tanning, to the pressure, to the fashion impulse of being sun-browned, the stigma of being too pale...oh wait, hold on.  yeah, they're still getting darkened, just with spray-on tans. I said. Spray. On. Tans. It's the skin cancer from exposure to UV rays they are worried about.

So, congratulations Macedonia, OH, and thank you CNN.  Some brave high school senior girls are standing up to create awareness. Not, apparently, to reject social pressure regarding appearance, vanity, artificiality, absurdity. Not to address an issue that has disturbed all teenage girls for a long time (not the 1 in 50 who get skin cancer). Not to celebrate humanity, beauty and sanity. But awareness of the increased risk of melanoma to tanning salon patrons. In advance of prom. Way to change the world.

Not that I wish to hail and defend the tanning salon industry. This is a case of dueling absurdities. It's like watching two seagulls fight over an Alka-Seltzer. Aren't I in favor of guarding against skin cancer? Sure. But focusing on tanning salons narrows their voice, (what about the sun?) and making it a Prom-centered campaign could have really brought redemption to a largely crass, high-pressure, frought-with-"At Risk"-behaviors event if not for the substitution of a kooky trend. Get your hair done. Accent your features with a little make-up. Wear perfume. But hosing yourself down to look the color of Gran Marnier is not subtle.

Steve Job is a witch

Here's one of my favorite skits:

Why do people think X when they used to think Y?

Elvis Presley...

In his time, Elvis's dancing was thought by most people to be lascivious. I was reminded of this when Fess Parker died (Daniel Boone actor). Parker said the Daniel Boone show was more popular than Elvis for most people because it was clean. We no longer think of Elvis with shock, but a sort of quaint 50's nostalgia.

Michael Jackson? When he became popular, I was in junior high school. The way he thrusted made even me uncomfortable. But today he is the King of Pop and a legend, a marvelous original dancer, almost heroic, and definitely beloved.

Marriage is less and less popular, but used to be an almost universal goal of people. Witness from song lyrics: 

Beach Boys Wouldn't It Be Nice

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

Then we wouldn't have to wait so long

...we could be married

then we'd be happy

The Hollies Bus Stop:

Some day my name and hers are going to be the same

...Nice to think that that umbrella Led me to a vow

Manfred Mann Do Wah Diddy.

She looked good (looked good), Looked fine (looked fine)

Looked good looked fine, Wedding bells are gonna chime

Then:  dressing up to fly on a plane. My first flight in 1977 was like dressing for church.  Now:  no dress code. Vacationers wear bikini's on a plane

Would the advertising slogan "An Army of One" been successful for military recruitment slogan in 1950?

"Making love" used to mean hugging, kissing and or sweet talking. (eg, in "Its a Wonderful Life", Mary shouts up to her mother upstairs about George Bailey: "he's making violent love to me, mother!" She meant wild kissing, nothing else.)

School class photos before 1980: Then: colors, prints, stripes, checks. Clothes were just clothes. And equal ratio of skirts and slacks, no logos. Now: hard to find a shirt without a logo or slogan on it.

Star Wars was mind-blowing in 1977. Now it takes Avatar to wow us.

Underwear: I grew up wearing monochrome briefs.
Why do boxers now come in patterns and colors? Implication: they are meant for viewing.

What is going on when some girl's shorts have letters right across the butt, such as "CHEER". I saw one today that said "bebe".

Christians believed in hell.

You interacted with an gas station attendant when buying gas.

Parents felt safe letting their children walk to school or ride a bike without a helmet.

Smoking used to be acceptable and drinking was frowned on. More or less reversed today.

Children's movies and cartoons never mentioned farting, vomiting, belching or underwear.

Homosexuality was listed with the AMA as a mental illness.

'Hate' used to be a word that was too strong for everyday use.

Boys aspired to military service and joined the Boy Scouts when they were too young to join the army.

Keys used to be left in cars, houses left unlocked.

Drawing, music, and needlecraft were normal activities for girls.

Poetry had rhyme and meter.

Books were made of paper.

ipad makes me squirm

I'm sick of latest-and-greatest products being presented like the arrival of the messiah to starry-eyed consumers. Some Apple marketing team must have said, "Hey! Let's hype it up like the arrival of Jesus. Let's posture it like the ushering in of the glorified state of ultimate human evolution." It's all about getting the next parcel of money from dizzy consumers fawning over the plastic and silicon marvel.

While the fools rush in, none pauses to think what the consequences of wholesale worship of computing gadgetry may be.

For one thing, the advent of the ipad will replace the Kindle, furthering the demise of reading and publishing. On one hand, ipad offers more features than the Kindle - wireless downloading of books, mall kiosks to printout and bind paper copies, bookmarking capabilities, resume your spot from office computer or cell phone while riding the bus, markup, highlighting, footnoting, on and on. But readers who would be content to read on a screen are arguably not really readers.

And all with the mysterious hype that Apple alone is able to generate. Bordering on religious. Or perhaps beyond that border.

So, as the publishing industry collapses (supposedly), we may be entering a phase where books become passe'. Then those of us with personal libraries will go underground. And in a generation, paper books will arise as the nostalgia, the new "retro" thing. It will be a flash of dying hype and corporate opportunism as literacy as we know it fades into the horizon. And people will be able to read only headlines, blurbs, logos, brandnames. And the mass of consumers will become puppets of corporate greed, working their pathetic jobs to produce money for corporations, like bodies in The Matrix, unable to think, only to feel and desire, only to lust for the latest product, kept alive as money-making batteries for the corporate elite, who can now arrange to have their officials elected to office, thanks to the recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance.

Those of us who still think, who still read books, we happy few, the dusty timeless band, we will be dismissed at least by the masses as Luddites. We will have our personal home libraries, which will be coveted by a new younger generation when we are old. When technology reaches its physical limits, and people get bored with the latest and greatest, and Steve Jobs is no more. Maybe then the renaissance will occur.

Truth and Beauty

Can one even speak of these things on a blog? How many will roll their eyes? How many will be caught in an unreflective moment and pass over this idea as so much blather by someone trying to sound erudite? Should I even say anything? Should I just keep it to myself? Some things one does keep to themselves. I am tempted, because I fear that you will not take it seriously. On the other hand, you may find it delightful as I do.

Nor is this just an introduction designed to draw you in. I don't do that. Yes, I too can smell marketing a mile away. None of us fall for pithy comments, cast forth with some ersatz longing, as if you could be caught like an October salmon on an Oregon stream. Forget that. This is only about nailing down something, an elusive definition. Have you had the same question?

I, like so many people, have wrestled over the relation of truth to beauty. I reached a point some years ago that was declared by John Keats - "truth is beauty, and beauty is truth, and that is the end of it." Are they, truth and beauty, the same? Much about them is similar; there is a beauty about things that are true. We've all noticed this. The same sensors go off when we discover a truth that also go off at the discovery of something beautiful.

Also, when you discover beauty, you feel as if you have discovered a new truth. You feel as if you may be the only one to find it. Or at least you are part of a small community that has opened your eyes to this beauty, and you are therefore possessed of a new truth.

But here is the new part. The path to truth is a painful path, fraught with risk of unemployment, sacrifice, destruction of cherished idols, alienation, disillusion. It is always painful. Perhaps you know this. Remember Barton Fink and the tormented life of the mind.

However, beauty involves the operation of aesthetic mental organs. It is pleasurable. We love good music, art, nature, symmetry, Feng Shui, the golden mean, a sunset, the Grand Canyon, a ballet.

Therefore, can anyone give substantial refutation of this conclusion: that truth and beauty are almost the same, except that all truth is apprehended through pain, and all beauty is apprehended in pleasure?  Corollary: if truth comes without pain, perhaps it is actually falsehood. And if beauty comes with pain, perhaps it is ugliness.

If you can give a contrary thesis please do so. If you want to write me personally for a longer treatment, I promise I will write back.

Green Zone - crap alert

Trailer for the new Matt Damon movie "Green Zone" includes such breath-taking dialogue as:

1. "Get your game face on!"
2. "People are dying! I want to know why!"

Some movie reviewer describes as "Entertaining as hell!" The trailer rolls like a segment from Modern Warfare 2 with live actors.
Let's endow the Motion Picture Association of America with power to issue citations for crappy movies.

Early feedback

Sorry if this and the last blog entry come across as too self promoting (but isn't all blogging?). I am learning about fiction writing. I want to speak about the short story I posted a couple of days ago.

Allow me to comment about it.  One friend described it as "dystopian" which is true, and pointed out several things that didn't work for him. Another reader politely said it was "interesting, but not my style. And you need to clean your head out."  Agreed on both counts.

People will likely find depiction of sexuality, pleasure-obsession, and toilet talk quite unsavory, perhaps even too much. So why am I so offensive (to some)? Consider this: how would people from previous generations find our habits and speech today? They would be shocked.

Wait now. Don't go saying, "Everyone knows they were stuffy and snobbish and uptight about sex, and I like the way we are now much better."  No, no, no.  Not fair.  Go 50 years into the future, and they will be saying the same thing about us.  Is the idea of unisex communal shower shocking?  Unisex bathrooms are already being created by universities.  Entertainment? Today's stuff is far beyond what anyone could conceive in years past. Does anyone question that the line will be pushed further and further?

What about my repeatedly drawing attention to toilet needs?

In part, this was to show the incompatibility between pleasure obsession and basic human functions. No matter how much we clean up, no matter how science or manners raise civilization, we still have stinky stuff to deal with. As Koheleth says, animals have the same breath of life in their nostrils as man does. Being rational doesn't mean we are disembodied. We still poop, sweat, barf, snot, and other things.

OK, but do we need to wallow in it?

No, but sometimes there is value in talking about our humanity, and secretions and bodily functions are is part of it. Just like how people were totally unprepared to see a dead body in the story (even today, we are hidden from death), our crazy attempt at polite society avoids non-humorous or non-charged references to human elimination processes.

In my writing, I am talking about human stuff. As Flannery O'Connor said, when you're talking to deaf people you have to yell (or something to that effect). So my goal is to draw attention to something that is human and therefore both wretched and beautiful.

If you hated my story, found it unreadable, made you cry or feel nauseous, please let me know. Send me an email. I like praise, but I benefit more by seeing your negative responses, and such things don't hurt me, so don't worry.

OTOH, if you want to hurt me, lie to me. Treat me like I can't handle the truth. Tiptoe around what you want to say. Or give a generic "oh, it was cool, man." Then I will know that you have no desire to for deeper friendship.

Short Story - Year 2061

You can read my latest short story by following this link.

It is called Year 2061.

It is the time when the United States has a new constitution framed to allow only one party, and Virtual Reality has taken over the personal computer and internet as the primary interface for all work and leisure. Three generations interact with this world in different ways, in their entertainment, education, and church. Finally one of them snaps.

I hope you enjoy it, and that you will feel free to email your comments to me, as well as suggested editing, criticisms, disagreements, and vituperations. And good stuff too.